Allied healthcare professionals (AHP), which include art therapists, dietitians, drama and music therapists, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, orthoptists, osteopaths, paramedics, physiotherapists, podiatrists, prosthetics and orthotists, radiographers and speech and language therapists, celebrated AHP Day on 14 October.   

As part of the celebrations the Frimley ICS AHP Team held a webinar to showcase some of their clinical and innovation successes in the last year* and then went on to announce the winners of the Frimley ICS AHP Awards. The three winners were:    

• Charlotte Glazzard - Frimley ICS AHP of the Year  
• Daniel McCrea - Frimley ICS AHP Support Worker of the Year  
• Caroline Dodds - Frimley ICS AHP Innovation and Transformation Champion  

According to Pam Marrier, respiratory physiotherapist, Charlotte and Daniel’s double award win was “a huge achievement for the Adult Integrated Respiratory (AIR) Team,” while Caroline Dodds, principal physiotherapist for critical care/surgery, prehabilitation & orthopaedics at Wexham Park Hospital also celebrated twice, receiving CEO Change Challenge support last week in addition to her AHP accolade.        

Charlotte, a respiratory physiotherapist and Dan, a respiratory therapy assistant, were both nominated for the Frimley ICS AHP Awards “due to their continued excellent work in driving respiratory physiotherapy forwards within the AIR Team.”   

Pam continues; “Charlotte has worked tirelessly in pushing forward the rapidly developing pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) services.  The team has grown in the last few years, meaning new venues have opened, so the structure and way the service is delivered has changed significantly.  Charlotte has helped develop a pathway for newly discharged patients to have quicker access to pulmonary rehabilitation and their services, which is reflected in the national pulmonary rehabilitation audit results.”   

“Dan joined the AIR Team in January 2023 and since then has been instrumental in redesigning the structure of the pulmonary rehabilitation classes.  He always puts patient care first and is always a team player, the team is lucky to have him.”    

In response to the award win, Charlotte said; “I was initially very surprised to receive the award, and then really grateful for the acknowledgment.  

“The AIR team as a whole are an essential and innovative team when it comes to respiratory care and admission avoidance, forming such a culture of quality improvement and excellent patient care that it is an extremely motivational place to work. I’m very happy to receive the award but accept it on behalf of the whole team, thank you.”  

Dan added; “Having only recently joined the NHS, it was both a surprise and an honour to receive this award. Fundamentally it is only because of the support I received when joining the AIR team, that I was able to make a small contribution to help transform our service to better the care for our patients.”   

AHP Innovation and Transformation Champion Caroline was nominated for her award based on the work she is currently doing on prehabilition services - the process of improving the strength and capability of a patient prior to a surgical procedure. Partnering with the Integrated Care Board (ICB) and ‘Leisure with Everyone Active’ Caroline and her team has been able to gain funding to pilot orthopaedic prehabilitation for one year with Northeast Hants and Farnham Place. Caroline says; “This is really exciting as we are trying to change the elective orthopaedic pathway for elective hips and knees by working in partnership with our colleagues as a system wide approach. We are hopeful that we will be able to get a fantastic data set to prove the benefit of this service to our patients so that it could be rolled out across the entire ICB.”  

Caroline’s Change Challenge win was for funding a digital app that could help her lung and colorectal prehabilitation service patients, a service funded by the Surrey and Sussex Cancer Alliance. Caroline says: “We hand our patients a large amount of information in leaflets and documents which can seem overwhelming. After speaking to patients and clinicians we felt a digital app would be an easier and more helpful way of relaying and imparting information and excises. Being digital means that more cancer patients and tumour groups could be helped by the app, virtually. If we could get a further digital app licence then virtual prehabilitation could also be rolled out to general surgical patients (general surgery colorectal, vascular, orthopaedics) which would help with their recovery.”  

Caroline concludes: “I was very surprised to win the AHP award but very humbled and grateful. It was truly a team effort and achieved by working very closely with fantastic colleagues”.    

* GetUBetter app for multiskeletal (MSK) conditions, prehab cancer treatment rehab groups, two CAPHO award nominations from within the system, and a speech and language therapy pilot which supports early intervention in primary care.