Allied Health Professions
What are allied health professionals?
Allied health professionals (AHPs) work with all age groups and within all specialties. Their particular skills and expertise can be the most significant factor in helping people to:
- recover movement or mobility
- overcome visual problems
- improve nutritional status
- develop communication skills
- restore confidence in everyday living skills.
AHPs work in a range of surroundings including hospitals, people’s homes, clinics, surgeries and schools.
They work in partnership with health and social care colleagues across primary, secondary and social care, as well as in the independent and voluntary sectors.
Allied health professionals have to be registered with the Health Professions Council (HPC). The HPC is an independent, UK wide regulatory body responsible for protecting the public by setting and maintaining standards of professional training, performance and conduct of the healthcare professions it regulates.
The HPC introduced ‘protection of title’ for allied health professionals so only a registered professional can use these titles.
The HPC has around 108,000 allied health professionals on its register. Approximately 80 percent of these AHPs work in England with about 76,000 working in the NHS.
What do allied health professionals do?
Here are some of the things allied health professionals do:
- assess, diagnose, treat, discharge and/or refer patients to other services
- teach, train and mentor other clinicians, students, patients and carers
- develop extended clinical and practitioner roles which cross professional and organisational boundaries
- liaise with other clinicians and provide specialist advice
- play a central role in the promotion of health and wellbeing
- take an active role in strategic planning and policy development for local organisations and services
- undertake research and development.
