SENIOR ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONS

SHARING YOUR STORY FROM PRACTICE TEMPLATE

Please provide a brief summary, under each heading, about your initiative.

Title of practice initiative: / Scope potential around standardising supporting professional activity (SPA) time across AHPs in NHS Lothian
Contact details (email essential)
Name (first name and surname) / Claire Ross (on behalf of project group including Matthew Curl, Katrina Lansdown, Emma Shaw and Isla Farrimond)
Job Title / Specialist Podiatrist
Profession / Podiatry
Health Board / NHS Lothian
Work email (essential) /
Work telephone: / 0131 537 7463
About the initiative
Why was the initiative carried out? / Within NHS Lothian, a leadership programme was developed to support current and aspiring AHP Leaders across the organisation. A component part of this 11-month programme was to undertake a group project to enable application of learning from the programme. The project titles were identified as priority areas in line with the organisational and AHP specific objectives. Within NHS Lothian a recent AHP review had included a time task analysis exercise which highlighted variation in supporting professional activity time practice.Supporting Professional Activity (SPA) is a collective term that encompasses a broad spectrum of learning and development opportunities that are a fundamental part of the work activities of AHPs.
What were the aims and objectives? / Aim - Identify current Supporting Professional Activity (SPA) practices within AHP services in NHS Lothian to identify current practices, highlight reasons for variation and devise recommendations and an implementation plan to reduce variation and align professional groups across the organisation by December 2011.
Objectives
To analyse the SPA data from the time task exercise within the AHP review to identify professional and geographical variation
To identify current SPA practices and provide additional depth to existing data
To identify existing resources and drivers which may influence this project
To define a plan to support implementation of a standardised approach to SPA for NHS Lothian AHPs in line with the AHP review requirements
What was the impact on : / As this was a scoping project, impact would result from the recommendations from this project which are anticipated to reduce variation in SPA including clinical supervision practice; enable consistent planning of development activities which have measurable impact.
  • Staff

  • Patients/carers

  • Service

What was learned from undertaking this initiative? / The project group maximised existing skill sets but were able to share learning including the application of project management tools/approaches, use of technology to support virtual project meetings, how as individuals our personal qualities and preferences aligned in a group dynamic.
We also gained an Increased understanding of current SPA practices across AHPs in Lothian in line with local and national policies and drivers (e.g. work based learning is most prevalent); reasons for variation including professional practices and banding; and the need for improved data sampling methods.
Additional comments

Please submit the completed form by:

  • Email to:
  • Post to:Vicki Mitchell

Project Administrator

NHS Education for Scotland

3rd floor, Hanover Buildings

66 Rose Street

Edinburgh EH2 2NN

  • Fax on:0131 225 5891