I kicked off this week with celebrations for National #AHPsDay by attending an event which was run across our STP organisations. The 14 professional groups that make up Allied Health Professionals (AHP) are the third largest workforce in the NHS. It was really lovely to meet AHP’s from different services and organisations, celebrating work that we do and to start planning our impact for the future. It was inspiring to hear from the STP leads that there is the belief AHP’s hold the key to making NHS services sustainable for the future.
Discussion was had around progression opportunities for AHPs; in my own experience, senior lead posts are often filled by nurses or medics. There was a real emphasis on the fact AHPs have a responsibility to promote our skills and should push to have greater representation in senior lead positions. I feel proud that I have been able to take a step in to a non-clinical role, promoting the use of my skills in another way. Although I am very happy in my current role (especially if my Programme Lead reads this!), for AHPs to have a real voice I will continue to think… what next for me?
Questionnaire responses
I have collated the initial responses I have had to the questionnaire I sent to community therapists – as I expected 100% feel they deliver personalised care, fantastic! I also asked the following questions…
- Please rate your confidence of delivering personalised care (0 being not confident to 10 being extremely confident)
- Would you consider yourself to have gone above and beyond what is expected of your role that may demonstrate personalised care? (please give examples)
- What impact does this have on your patients?
- How does this make you feel?
- Are there any barriers to delivering personalised care in your working role?
- Do you see any opportunity to improve the personalisation of care in your role, if so how?
- Are there any training needs/ resources you need to deliver improved personalised care?
I asked about current knowledge of NHS England’s personalised care programme and whether there is interest to know more about the programme locally. Communications is something I have become really passionate about and the results so far suggest there is work to do around raising the profile of the national programme and also interest in local programme activity.
In order to have greater understanding of how professional groups are working as a foundation for facilitation of training I need to gather more data, therefore…
Idea 14: Send the questionnaire out to further community therapy teams across the county
Idea 15: Consider sending the questionnaire to other professional groups such as community matrons/ specialist services
Key thoughts this week…
- The importance of pushing professional boundaries and promoting the skills you have in order to move in to non-clinical leadership roles. AHPs do have a voice – we just need to shout louder!
- The importance of collecting data to inform change and also the challenges that can come with collecting data from people. Personally I have been known to be a bit rubbish in filling out questionnaires, so here is my pledge that from now on I will make a conservative effort to give feedback and respond to questionnaires!
Achievements this week:
- Naming the 14 professions that make up AHPs – surprisingly harder than you may first think!
- Networking, Networking, Networking
- Reaching out to other professional groups to send my questionnaire to, in order to gather further information on staff’s current perceptions of the personalised care they give
Plans for next week:
- Meet with the communications team to discuss promotion of the programme locally
- Attend a frailty event to better understand the STP plans with regards to this work stream
- Continue planning and thinking about workforce development
Personalised Care Mission 