Two occupational therapists have won awards at NHS England’s Chief Allied Health Professions Officer Awards, out of the seven nominees who made the finals.
Out of the three occupational therapist nominees for the AHP Workforce Award, Lindsay Pyne from Bromley Healthcare won for developing healthcare careers discovery days. The initiative is intended to increase local young people’s knowledge of all healthcare career choices, especially AHP professions.
Lindsay and the team led three careers days attended by 156 young people with staff and students representing every clinical profession in the organisation. One event a year focuses on young people choosing their GCSEs, while a second supports older age groups looking at picking university courses.
Lindsay says: ‘The days were developed as we had lots of work experience requests for nursing and to be a doctor and not so many for people thinking about an AHP career.
‘What we have noticed is we have had loads more work experience requests and more staff willing to take people on too. There have definitely been lots more interest in occupational therapy – it’s one of the professions that has increased its requests the most.’
Carolyne Hague, professional lead for occupational therapy (community) at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, won the NICE into Action Award for her work on enabling intermediate care.
The team embedded intermediate care core principles into three community hospitals in east Devon, helping to cut delays in leaving hospital and reducing the numbers admitted to care homes.
The judges praised the nomination for showing AHPs pushing boundaries of multi-professional, strategic leadership and having an impact at a system-wide level; and clearly describing and using a range of recognised quality improvement and change methodologies that link to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance and quality standards.
Carolyne said the award was for a team effort and added: ‘It was amazing to have won the award – we all worked so hard to achieve it. To get the national recognition, especially from NICE, as it was based on its guidance, was incredible.’