« Previous | Contents | Next »
Listen
Building on Success - Future Directions for the Allied Health Professions in Scotland
Shaping the Future
10. Building
on Success, Building
for Success . . .
Delivering the high quality integrated care people want and expect is a high priority for health and social care. It involves reassessing many of the assumptions which underpin everyday service provision. This closing chapter reflects how AHPs are contributing to the task of responding effectively to the changing demographic and social profile of Scotland to develop services designed to meet people's diverse needs.
10. Building
on Success, Building
for Success . . .
AHPs will be expected to build on their core competencies, adding additional knowledge and skills through lifelong learning to enable them to provide new and better services to patients. There will be more opportunities for them to work in both specialist and generalist roles within multi-professional and, increasingly, multi-agency teams. These new roles will enable AHPs to respond to the changing needs of patients through flexible patient-focused services that strive to improve and sustain health and wellbeing as well as treating ill health.
Valuing and sustaining the existing workforce is also vital, as is supporting talented and energetic graduates in their early careers to make a full contribution to influencing and developing services.
AHPs have a tremendous range of unique and distinctive clinical skills at their disposal, as well as organisational and managerial capabilities. But they don't need to have the word 'leader' or 'manager' in their title to exercise leadership or influence change. Leadership can and should be exercised at every level.
Experienced AHPs should extend their leadership and change management capabilities and act as role models for junior staff, the leaders of tomorrow. Practitioners who directly work with patients in this way can often be the most influential in terms of making an impact on improved care provision.
NHSScotland needs leadership that puts patients first, that inspires and motivates, that challenges traditional boundaries and seizes the opportunities of today to build and deliver a better NHSScotland of tomorrow. AHPs are ready to play their part, building on the successes of the past to ensure success for the future.
« Previous | Contents | Next »