Occupational Therapy News OTnews October 2019 | Page 32

FEATURE CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Promoting the allied health
professions to the future
workforce
Margaret Braid and Lynn Dorman describe the organisation and
facilitation of a series of events in Fife for school children to visit
hospitals to find out about the allied health professions as a career
32 OTnews October 2019
I
n the Scottish Government publication Active
Independent Living Programme (2016-2020) – a
framework for health professionals to work in
partnership with people in Scotland to help them
live healthy, active and independent lives, one of the
six ambitions is to raise awareness of the allied health
professions (AHPs).
In order to do this it is imperative to work with
stakeholders and partners to educate them on who
the AHPs are and the services they provide.
To promote the professions it is important to
offer opportunities to school pupils to raise their
awareness of the professions in order that they
may consider a career as an AHP in the future. The
allied health professional practice education lead
(AHP PEL) for NHS Fife was tasked with exploring a
model to market the AHP services to school
age children, thereby developing the young
workforce.
These events were targeted at second year pupils,
so that they could be made aware of the subjects
that they should choose to study from third year, as
well as the necessary skills and attributes required, if
they were considering a career as an AHP.
Due to the Fife-wide geographical size and the
number of high schools within the region (18), it was
decided to run the events in three different hospital
locations across Fife, in order that schools all had an
opportunity to partake in them.
The events ran from 9.30am to 12.30pm, to
accommodate school transport, lunchtimes and
minimise disruptions to clinical interventions. Over the
three events, 185 pupils attended.
Planning and organising the events
The flowchart outlines the process involved in
planning and organising these events. The video
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MFVYz2KcBo&fe