Allied Health Professions hold key role in future NHS

The Allied Health Professions (AHPs) have a significant role to play in the future delivery of integrated urgent care within the NHS. And the quality of leadership of the AHPs will be vital in determining their impact and the quality of care that patients receive. See NHS England article here

Health care education funding for postgraduate, dental hygiene and dental therapy students

Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) -
From August 2018 new postgraduate pre-registration nursing, midwifery, allied health professional, and most new dental hygiene and dental therapy students will access loans from the Student Loans Company. New DHSC guidance explains the changes in further detail.
Access the guidance at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/healthcare-education-funding-for-postgraduate-and-dental-students/healthcare-education-funding-for-postgraduate-and-dental-students

Programme launched to support AHPs and healthcare scientists to return to practice

The Department of Health, in collaboration with Health Education England (HEE), has launched a new initiative to support allied health professionals (AHP) and healthcare scientists (HCS) return to practice.

 It supports AHPs and HCSs whose registration has lapsed or for those who have not registered for over five years since qualifying. Upon completion, this programme will allow them to return to the register.

Launch of advanced clinical practice framework

The new national multi-professional framework for advanced clinical practice in England has been launched by Health Education England.

Revised guidance on confidentiality published

The HCPC has relaunched its Guidance on confidentiality, which provides advice for registrants on how they should handle and share information about service users.

Advancing Healthcare Awards 2018

Entries are now open for the Advancing Healthcare Awards 2018.

In its 12th year the awards are open to allied health professionals, healthcare scientists and those who work alongside them in support roles, and aim to recognise and reward those projects and professionals that make a real difference to patients’ lives.

Nominations are welcomed from individuals, teams and patients, service users and carers. With four new awards, there are now 14 categories in total, with the overall winner announced at a ceremony held on 20 April 2018 in London.

The deadline for entries is 5pm on Friday 19 January 2018.

Older persons fellowship - applications open

Applications to become an expert in providing high quality care for older people are now open.

The Older Persons Fellowship for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), sponsored by Health Education England (HEE), aims to drive clinical excellence, innovation and quality improvement in care for older people.

The ethos of the Older Persons Fellowship is quality, safety, service transformation and innovation in older people’s care. This multidisciplinary Fellowship will empower confident, competent, and compassionate leaders to act as role models and agents of change, to transform person-centred services.

Career Development Framework: Guiding Principles for Occupational Therapy published

The new Career development framework: guiding principles for occupational therapy, published by the RCOT, is an overarching set of guiding principles for occupational therapy, offering a structured process to guide careers, learning and development within the profession.

The Framework contains four interacting Pillars of Practice (Professional Practice; Facilitation of Learning; Leadership; and Evidence, Research and Development), each with nine Levels. It can help you to identify the things you have already learnt and areas for continuing professional development.

Little-known facts about university hospitals

University hospitals play a crucial role in the NHS, delivering high-quality acute care, training the doctors and health professionals of tomorrow and conducting groundbreaking clinical research.

Despite a distinct role and purpose within the healthcare system, the breadth of their contribution is not always fully understood.

This infographic, developed with the Association of UK University Hospitals, sheds light on their significant contribution.

Details of clinical placements released

Details have been released by Health Education England (HEE) regarding the arrangements for funding additional clinical placements in nursing, midwifery and allied health pre-registration education.

Connecting allied health professionals (AHPs)

NHS Improvement recently hosted four regional events for provider AHP leads on evidencing the quality and productivity of AHPs’ care.

The events provided an introductionopens in a new window to the Model Hospital, AHP job planning, and the early findings of a deployment tracker metric that some AHP leads are currently implementing.

Conflicts of interest joint statement

Today, the Chief Executives of the statutory regulators of health care professionals have issued a joint statement on ‘conflicts of interest’. It sets out expectations of nurses and midwives as well as other health and care professionals in relation to avoiding, declaring and managing conflicts of interest across healthcare settings.

HCPC publishes Education annual report 2016

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) has published its Education annual report covering the period of 1 September 2015 to 31 August 2016. This report provides statistical information and analysis and is designed to highlight key trends and what caused them, in particular important developments in the education sector.

HCPC - standards of education and training and guidance

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) has released revised Standards of education and training (SETs) and guidance.

The SETs are the standards against which the HCPC assesses education and training programmes.

Key changes include:

• new standards requiring interprofessional education, learner involvement and supporting learners to raise concerns;
• strengthening the link between the SETs and the standards of conduct, performance and ethics; 
• making key terminology broader, inclusive and up to date with current terminology used in the sector.

Projects led by physios triumph at HSJ awards

Physiotherapists were among the winning teams at this year’s Health Service Journal (HSJ) Value in Healthcare Awards, which celebrates outstanding efficiency and improvement in the NHS.

They included a physio-led team from Leicester, which won in the training and development category of the awards.

Diabetes Education

The Effective Diabetes Education Now (EDEN) team from Leicester Diabetes Centre, a collaboration between the local NHS trust and university, received recognition for developing pioneering technology for a diabetes training programme for healthcare professionals.

The team are using artificial intelligence algorithms to generate course recommendations for diabetes training, and to monitor response rates and the training needs of thousands of healthcare professionals.

Standardising chemotherapy doses

A physio-led team from NHS England were named the winners in the pharmacy and medicines optimisation category of the awards.

The team were recognised for their work to standardise chemotherapy drug doses across England, through the implementation of a standardised approach to dose banding.

Diagnostic ultrasound physios

A team of extended scope physiotherapists, from Homerton University Hospital NHS Trust in London, received recognition for providing point-of-care diagnostic ultrasound in the community.

Revised guidance on returning to practice published

THE HCPC has published revised guidance on returning to practice.

Specific changes
One of the main changes to the guidance is the inclusion of a flow chart that clearly depicts the returning to practice process and assists the reader in determining whether returning to practice requirements apply to them.

We have also provided clarity around what we mean by ‘practising your profession’ and the difference between the supervisor and counter-signatory roles. The guidance also now signposts to professional bodies for further guidance on profession-specific practice and periods of updating.

We would like to thank everyone that contributed to the review of the guidance.

Updates to the Model Hospital

NHS Improvement has made some changes to the Model Hospital including new compartments, features and a self-registration function for providers.

It's added pathology and doctor productivity to the list of compartments, and refreshed data to the following compartments:

• pharmacy and medicines
• nursing and midwifery
• allied health professionals
• visitor cost recovery

New Guide for occupational therapists to support understanding of Patient Group Directions

The College of Occupational Therapists has released a new guide to help its members understand patient group directions, a legal mechanism which when in place will allow them to supply and administer medicines to patients and service users.

Liverpool NHS trust’s AHP strategy to forge links between physios and researchers

Cooperation between physiotherapists and researchers at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust could be strengthened by the trust’s first strategy for allied health professions (AHPs).

A key objective of the three-year strategy, launched at the end of 2016, is to open up opportunities for AHPs to participate in research to improve patient services.

Seven day services in the NHS

New collection from NHS Improvement on seven day services in the NHS:

• What does it mean to provide seven day services?
• The 10 clinical standards
• The four priority standards
• What do seven day services mean for patients?
• Related content
• Resources

See also some shared learning case studies: 

• Implementing a central urgent advice line
• Improving access to urgent and emergency care
• Introducing seven day services to pharmacy roles (video)
• Introducing seven day services to a diagnostic team (video)
• Introducing seven day services - a transformation viewpoint (video)
• Seven day services learning and sharing event: challenges and solutions
• Providing seven day services for urgent and emergency care
• Providing 24/7 emergency care
• Introducing seven day services - a nursing viewpoint
• Introducing seven day services - a medical viewpoint
• Introducing seven day services to clinical support roles
• Introducing seven day services to therapy teams