CORRESPONDENCE

our paper titled ‘Conceptualisation of the characteristics of advanced practitioners in the medical radiation professions’1 is welcome and raises important issues. Our decision not to foreground research but to integrate it into the concept model was done with purpose. Research has relevance to a number of the core roles of advanced practitioners, such as ‘Scholarship and Teaching ’ and ‘Evidence Based Practice’1, and we could not justify representing it as a separate characteristic. Rather we argue that advanced practitioners must acquire research skills and apply research evidence in clinical practice. Further, the model, and advanced practice generally, is primarily about clinical practice and so all advanced practitioners will be clinicians in the first instance, providing health care services to individuals or patien