Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) across South Yorkshire have received national recognition for the excellent work they do in the Annual Chief AHP Officer awards 2023.
AHPs are health care professions that provide a range of diagnostic, technical, therapeutic, and support services in connection with health care, but also leadership across patient pathways, education, training and quality improvement. Their services are allied with and support the work of a number of other health professions such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, optometry and pharmacy.
South Yorkshire’s AHPs were successful in 4 out of 8 National Chief AHP Officer awards in October including:
AHP Public Health Champion award 2023 – awarded to the Sport for Confidence Team which is led by an Occupational Therapist Liz Fletcher. They conducted a pilot embedding physical activity into a whole system approach to adult health and social care.
AHP Digital practice award 2023 – awarded to Rachel Radford a Speech and Language Therapist from The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust. Rachel received the award for embedding video appointments for Voice Therapy which was then adopted across the system.
AHP Workforce transformation award 2023 – awarded to Fiona Leahy, a Physiotherapist at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospital for her work on supporting workforce education and career advancement.
AHP Research impact award 2023 – awarded to Natalie Jones, a Clinical Academic Occupational Therapist, Research Associate and NIHR Clinical Doctorate Fellow at the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust. Natalie is an exceptional and driven clinical academic whose portfolio of research evidence for patient benefit of virtual home visit technology has been showcased nationally.
Cathy Winfield, Chief Nurse at NHS South Yorkshire said:
“Congratulations to South Yorkshire’s AHPs who were successful in the National Chief AHP Officer awards in October. This is an outstanding achievement and I am delighted for them all.
“AHPs are the third-largest clinical workforce within health and care and they play a pivotal role in providing excellent care to patients in both the prevention of ill health and supporting people back to health after an inpatient stay, amongst many other important roles. I am proud to see so many AHPs from our system recognised for the important work they lead and deliver.”