ARU project team
Tim Hayes
Deputy Head of School of Allied Health (Public Health and Healthcare Management courses)
This partnership will use participatory approaches to test new ways of recruiting and retaining Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) in marginalised areas, in order to address local AHP staff shortages, and therefore improve patient care.
AHPs are a large, diverse workforce providing essential services across urgent, emergency, acute and community settings. Significant challenges to the AHP workforce, particularly in rural, coastal and deprived urban areas, are compromising patient care and restricting service innovation.
AHP services are short-staffed, and this negatively impacts patient care and waiting times. This means some people can’t get imaging, cancer treatment and rehabilitation when they need it. These shortages also affect the working conditions and well-being of AHPs, which may make them want to leave the NHS.
Our AHP Workforce Research Partnership brings together individuals and organisations from across disciplines and sectors in three regional workforce research hubs to deliver prioritised AHP workforce research using participatory approaches. The partnership is led by by Sheffield Hallam University (PI Professor Julie Nightingale) with the East of England Hub led by Prof Sally Fowler Davis. Additional partners are the University of Suffolk, University of Lincoln, University of Sheffield, and NHS East of England.
This research is funded by the NIHR (160536A). The research investment is nearly £5m, and represents a significant opportunity to evidence best practices in workforce leadership and management using evidence-based decision-making. There has been limited work in this space with AHPs in policy and practice driving service innovation without the benefit of a research partnership.
"We want to bring forward the work of AHPs with patients and communities in more marginal areas including rural and coastal areas where we know services struggle to recruit and retain staff."
Prof Sally Fowler DavisARU will lead the Community Inclusion and Engagement Group, co-chaired by Rachel Wakefield, Regional Chief Allied Health Professional for NHS England, and Prof Sally Fowler Davis. The group will generate new research questions and also help to disseminate findings widely.
The group will reflect the interests of 14 AHP professions, including physiotherapists, paramedics, and radiographers. They are the third largest workforce in the NHS, providing specialist emergency, diagnostics, and treatment services from birth to end of life, yet most previous research has focussed on nurses and doctors (the first and second largest workforces).
Over the first 18 months of the project, we will work with stakeholders to identify what research they need to determine their staffing priorities. We will work with our partner hospitals to better understand which staff are leaving, when, and why.
As patient and public engagement is a central concern, the research programme will begin with a James Lind Alliance methodology. Public engagement has already helped to plan this first stage, with ARU's Let's Shape Research Together helping to identify research priorities. These activities will help us decide on and define the projects we will pursue during years 2-5 of the partnership, but we anticipate that our broad focus will be on new ways of training, better ways to keep staff in their jobs at each stage of their career, and how new ways of working could improve patient care.
AHP shortages are worst in rural areas, coastal places, and less well-off communities, where it is difficult to attract and keep staff. Additionally, the current AHP workforce does not look like the communities it cares for: there are few males and low numbers of AHPs from ethnic minority groups. This research will help us better understand these problems, and what might be done to address them.
The partnership's three regional hubs across eastern England (Lincolnshire, East of England, South Yorkshire) will work with NHS services, partners, and communities in South Yorkshire towns such as Barnsley, and in rural and seaside towns from Grimsby to Clacton-on-Sea, to co-design a plan that helps get AHPs in post, keep them in services, and support them to best meet the needs of patients.
Deputy Head of School of Allied Health (Public Health and Healthcare Management courses)