Resources & Support for Acute Medicine Nursing
Practical resources, professional guidance and support for nurses working across Acute Medicine, Acute Medical Units and Same Day Emergency Care.
Find the tools you need for clinical practice, capability development and professional growth — alongside support for you, your colleagues and your wider team.
What do you need today?
Start with what matters to you now. Whether you are looking for something to support clinical practice, developing yourself or your team, or finding help when work is difficult, we have brought the key resources together in one place.
Support my clinical practice
Find practical guidance, competencies and resources to support nursing practice across Acute Medicine, AMU and Same Day Emergency Care.
Clinical resources
Build my capability
Use the Career & Capability Framework, development resources and practical tools to understand where you are and what could come next.
Framework resources
Develop myself or my team
Explore learning, webinars, professional development, revalidation and resources that can support both individual nurses and those developing others.
Education & development
Support myself or my team
Find practical support for the pressures of frontline work, whether you need help yourself, are supporting a colleague or want to improve the working environment.
Wellbeing & supportNot sure where to start?
These resources are designed to complement each other. Clinical capability, education, career development and staff wellbeing are all part of sustaining a strong Acute Medicine nursing workforce.
Clinical practice resources
Practical resources to support nurses working across Acute Medical Units, Same Day Emergency Care and enhanced acute care — alongside tools for service quality, flow and benchmarking.
SDEC Nursing Competency Framework
A practical competency resource for nurses developing the knowledge and skills needed to work within Same Day Emergency Care services. Use it alongside local education, supervision and competency-assessment processes.
Acute Medicine Enhanced Care Guidance
SAM guidance for enhanced care within Acute Medicine, endorsed by the Royal College of Nursing.
Six to Help Fix
SAM guidance focused on practical approaches to improving in-hospital flow and supporting effective Acute Medicine services.
SDEC guidance & position statements
Access SAM's SDEC resources, including standards, joint statements and guidance on delivering same-day acute care.
Supporting safe, effective Acute Medicine services
Clinical nursing practice sits within the wider system around it. These resources can help teams think about service quality, workforce, benchmarking and how care is organised.
Using clinical resources in practice: national frameworks and professional resources should be used alongside current local policies, organisational governance requirements and professional judgement. Where older SAM resources are retained for useful historical or service-development context, they are identified above.
Career & Capability Framework resources
Use the framework to support career conversations, identify development needs and build Acute Medicine capability — whether you are developing yourself, supporting a colleague or planning education for a team.
Acute Medicine Career Framework for Nursing
See how an Acute Medicine nursing career can develop from being new to the specialty through to senior, advanced and consultant-level practice across clinical, leadership, education and research roles.
Career conversations, development planning, understanding possible roles and seeing how progression can occur across different professional pathways.
Acute Medicine Capability Framework for Nurses
Explore the Acute Medicine capabilities that sit around good nursing practice and support nurses as they develop specialist knowledge, skills and confidence within the specialty.
Identifying learning needs, structuring development, supporting supervision and building evidence of capability in Acute Medicine practice.
Using the framework in practice
The framework is most useful when it supports development conversations. Start with current practice, identify what matters next and return to the framework as roles and experience develop.
Use the Career Framework to understand your current stage and possible directions.
Explore strengths, learning needs and areas where further experience may help.
Agree practical next steps with a supervisor, educator or manager.
Return to the framework as roles, interests and responsibilities change.
Prefer to work with the framework online?
Browse sections, search within either framework and jump directly to the capability you need while still viewing the original published document.
Want to explore the career pathway visually?
Career & Development brings together the pathway, capability model and real Acute Medicine nursing role profiles.
Education & professional development
Keep developing throughout your Acute Medicine career — through formal learning, shared experience, professional networks and opportunities to support the development of others.
Keep learning
Stay connected with current Acute Medicine practice through SAM learning, webinars and educational meetings.
Develop your career
Use the career pathway and wider SAM Nursing resources to identify possible next steps and build experience across clinical practice, leadership, education and research.
Support others to develop
Educators, supervisors and senior nurses play an important role in creating opportunities for others to learn, reflect and progress.
Professional development is continuous
Development does not only happen through courses. Clinical experience, supervision, reflection, improvement work and supporting others can all contribute to professional growth.
NMC revalidation
Revalidation provides a structured opportunity to reflect on your practice, continuing professional development, feedback and professional standards. Use the current NMC guidance when preparing for revalidation.
Visit NMC revalidationWellbeing & support
Acute Medicine can be demanding. Support matters when you need it, but wellbeing is also about how teams work together and whether the conditions around us make it possible to deliver good care sustainably.
I need support
If work, stress, burnout, bereavement, financial pressure or something else is becoming difficult to manage, there are places you can turn for practical and confidential support.
The SAM Find Support page includes support by issue, profession and nation, as well as routes to urgent help when needed.
I’m supporting someone else
Support does not always begin with a formal intervention. Noticing, checking in, sharing the load and making it safe to ask for help can all make a difference within a team.
Explore practical ideas for checking in with colleagues, supporting people after difficult events and building a culture where people can speak openly.
I want to make work better
Poor processes, unnecessary duplication, unclear communication and repeated friction can make an already demanding clinical environment harder than it needs to be.
Notice what repeatedly makes work harder, understand the problem, test practical changes and learn from what happens.
Flourishing on the Frontline
The SAM Wellbeing Hub brings together practical support, ideas for individuals and teams, real experiences and work addressing the conditions that contribute to burnout and moral distress across Acute Medicine.
Visit the Wellbeing HubSometimes better coping is not the answer
Individual wellbeing cannot compensate for unsafe or unsustainable working conditions. When clinicians repeatedly find themselves unable to provide the care they believe patients need because of capacity, workforce, crowding or wider system constraints, supporting people and changing the system need to go together.
Explore moral injury & system changeFlourishing is shared work. It depends on people, teams, leaders and the wider system.
Nursing networks & community
Acute Medicine nursing is stronger when people working in different services can connect, share ideas and learn from each other. Join the wider SAM nursing community and help shape what comes next.
Connect beyond your own unit
Whether you want to meet other Acute Medicine nurses, share a service idea, contribute to national work or simply hear how other teams approach similar challenges, there are several ways to become involved.
Join the SAM Nurse Forum
Meet Acute Medicine nurses from across the UK through regular online forums. Share practice, discuss challenges, hear about current work and learn from colleagues beyond your own organisation.
Connect with the Nursing Leadership Network
Join the Acute Medical Nursing Leadership Network to connect with nurses leading, developing and influencing Acute Medicine services across the UK.
Be part of SAM
SAM is a multidisciplinary professional community. Membership gives nurses the opportunity to learn, connect and contribute to the wider work shaping Acute Medicine.
Have something to share?
If you have a nursing resource, project, service innovation, research idea or example of good practice that could help the wider Acute Medicine community, get in touch with the SAM Nursing team.
Contact the Nurse RepresentativeAcute Medicine nursing is more than the work happening in any one unit. It is a professional community we build together.