Hospital celebrates Allied Health Professionals Day

Northern Care Alliance NHS Group

NHS staff who work as Allied Health Professionals at North Manchester General Hospital will be celebrating the first ever National Allied Health Professionals Day on 15 October.

National AHPs Day will celebrate the high-quality contribution to health and social care of health professionals including physiotherapists, occupational therapists, podiatrists, speech and language therapists, dieticians and radiologists.

The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which now works closely with Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust as part of the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group (NCA), employs over 500 AHPs at its hospitals in Oldham, Bury, Rochdale and North Manchester.

On the day AHP staff from North Manchester General will be displaying a range of posters and boards for other staff showing integrated working, AHPs in numbers, and the role of occupational therapy with HIV/AIDS patients.

There will also be an employee hoist demonstration, moving and handling sessions for staff, a meet and greet with the different teams, and the speech therapists and dieticians will be demonstrating the use of supplements to colleagues. There will also be foot care advice from the podiatrists and free pilates sessions for staff.

Alison Ahamed, Operational and Professional Physiotherapy lead at North Manchester General Hospital said: “AHP day is an excellent opportunity for the Allied Health Professions to demonstrate the high-quality care that they provide for patients and also the ways in which they integrate and work closely with each other as well as the nursing and medical staff. It is also an opportunity to recognise the AHPs working at advanced practitioner level and the new roles that are developing in order to enhance patient care.”

The self-referral service has been running since May, funded by two GP neighbourhoods in North Manchester- Neighbourhoods two  (Miles Platting, Newton Heath, City Centre and Moston) and three (Higher Blackley, Harpurhey & Charleston). Neighbourhood four (Ancoats, Clayton and Bradford) will be joining soon.

The project allows rapid access to specialist advice and treatment for any type of musculoskeletal problem. It can identify conditions that may need more investigation or onward referral and we hope to reduce the number of GP appointments required for musculoskeletal related problems.

The project team has recently been announced as a finalist in the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group Staff Awards’ Quality Improvement and Innovation category.