This clinically focused and practical one-day course is designed for AHPs and nurses working in urgent, emergency, same-day emergency care, frailty, virtual ward, community urgent response, and primary care pathways who want to strengthen their assessment, clinical reasoning, and management of acute symptoms within their professional scope.

Acute medical presentations in urgent and emergency care are often complex, overlapping, and difficult to differentiate. Beneath symptoms such as breathlessness, chest discomfort, abdominal pain, dizziness, confusion, fatigue, or functional decline may sit underlying cardiac, respiratory, endocrine, abdominal, renal, infectious, dermatological, or frailty-related conditions that increase the risk of deterioration, admission, or missed pathology.

This course supports clinicians to move beyond isolated symptom assessment and develop a more structured, systems-informed, person-centred, and function-focused approach to urgent care assessment and management.

The course focuses on practical, repeatable clinical assessment skills and clinical reasoning approaches that can be applied across common acute medical presentations. Participants will explore how acute symptoms affect function, mobility, cognition, occupational performance, safety, and discharge planning, while developing confidence in recognising red flags, identifying differential diagnoses, managing uncertainty, and making safe escalation or discharge decisions in time-pressured environments.

Practical Learning

The course blends:

• Demonstration and practical assessment activities

• Case-based learning and clinical reasoning discussion

• Scenario-based assessment and decision-making

• Functional assessment and discharge planning considerations

• Collaborative MDT-focused learning

• Systems-based assessment approaches across common acute presentations

Participants will explore how to:

• Undertake structured assessment of acute medical presentations affecting function, safety, and discharge planning

• Recognise red flags and differentiate common versus potentially serious presentations

• Apply clinical reasoning and differential diagnosis processes across cardiovascular, respiratory, abdominal, endocrine, renal, and dermatological presentations

• Interpret assessment findings, observations, and risk factors within urgent and emergency care settings

• Recognise how frailty, delirium, cognitive impairment, medications, dehydration, and social complexity influence acute presentation and recovery

• Integrate functional assessment, rehabilitation principles, self-management support, and prevention strategies into urgent care management

• Support patient flow through safe escalation, discharge planning, rehabilitation, virtual ward, and community pathway decisions

• Apply evidence-informed management approaches within professional scope while recognising escalation thresholds and diagnostic uncertainty

The course places strong emphasis on enhanced functional assessment, systems-based clinical reasoning, risk management, and person-centred decision-making, ensuring learners leave with practical approaches they can apply immediately within urgent and emergency care settings.

Aim and Objectives

To provide clinicians with enhanced knowledge, practical assessment skills, and clinical reasoning approaches to safely assess, manage, and plan care for patients presenting with acute medical symptoms in urgent and emergency care settings, integrating physical, cognitive, psychosocial, occupational, and environmental factors to support safe decision-making, discharge planning, recovery, and system flow.

By the end of the course, learners will be able to:

• Undertake structured, holistic, and risk-informed assessment of acute medical presentations, incorporating physical, cognitive, psychosocial, occupational, and environmental factors.

• Apply enhanced clinical reasoning to identify common versus potentially serious acute presentations and develop appropriate differential diagnoses.

• Use clinical findings, evidence-informed tools, and professional judgement to support decision-making in urgent, complex, and time-pressured situations.

• Undertake focused systems-based assessment relevant to common cardiovascular, respiratory, abdominal, endocrine, renal, and dermatological presentations affecting function and safety.

• Formulate safe, person-centred management plans integrating symptom management, rehabilitation, functional recovery, risk management, and escalation planning.

• Recognise frailty, delirium, functional decline, dehydration, polypharmacy, mental health, and social complexity as important contributors to acute presentation and recovery.

• Integrate self-management support, prevention, health promotion, and rehabilitation principles into urgent and emergency care planning.

• Make safe discharge, escalation, and referral decisions, including use of community pathways, virtual wards, rehabilitation services, and digital support options.

• Communicate effectively with patients, carers, and the wider MDT to support shared decision-making, coordinated care, and safe transitions across urgent and emergency care pathways.

• Facilitate learning in clinical practice through clinical leadership and collaborative working to improve patient outcomes, reduce unwarranted variation, and support flow across urgent and emergency care services.

Total CPD Time

Pre-course learning: 1–2 hours

Face-to-face course: 1 day

Post -course learning: 1-2 hurs