In today’s ever-evolving healthcare environment, Allied Health can be said to be the foundation of comprehensive and competent patient care. Doctors and nurses will always remain integral; nevertheless, Allied Health professionals are playing a more and more key role in addressing the treatment, rehabilitation, prevention, and public health space.
With 7 million allied health professionals globally, allied health professionals represent the majority of the healthcare workforce, positively influencing patient outcomes across a broad spectrum and settings across their community. Allied health professions such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dietetics, radiography, speech pathology, psychology, social work, and many more, all contribute to holistic patient care, not only occurring in hospitals or health services settings.
In this blog, we will outline why Allied Health is the backbone of modern healthcare, how it impacts health, and why focusing on the Allied Health workforce is vital to developing a resilient, sustainable healthcare system.
What is Allied Health?
Allied Health refers to a diverse grouping of health care professionals who are not medical or dental, and are also not nursing. Allied Health Professionals work together as part of the patient care team's delivery capacity. Allied Health professionals provide identified, preventative, and treatment services, while also promoting both physical and mental health.
Examples of commonly found Allied Health career pathways:
• Physiotherapist
• Occupational Therapist
• Dietitian and Nutritionist
• Speech Pathologist
• Radiographer and Sonographer
• Social Worker
• Podiatrist
• Exercise Physiologist
• Audiologist
• Paramedic
These professional roles cover clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventative care, forming the backbone of the integrated health service delivery.
The Expanding Scope of Allied Health in Modern Medicine
Modern health care is shifting from episodic treatment towards preventative and person-centered care. The move towards person-centered care has resulted in a growing demand for allied health professionals whose focus is on the improvement of long-term health, functionality, and independence. Examples include the following:
• A physiotherapist assists patients with post-surgery recovery and chronic pain management.
• A registered dietitian develops and factors nutrition management plans for diabetes or heart disease.
• A speech pathologist aids stroke survivors with communication and speaking.
• An occupational therapist assists individuals with disabilities in improving daily living skills.
These allied health services assist in decreasing hospital re-admissions, improving quality of life, and assisting patients on their continuum of care.
1. The Unsung Heroes of Patient Recovery
While allied health professionals provide another layer of service in rehabilitation and recovery, their work is critical. After the surgeon or doctor has treated their patient, it's often the physios, occupational therapists, and psychologists who actually guide the patient in their recovery.
Case Study: Stroke rehabilitation
While a stroke sufferer may first see a neurologist, any long-term recovery is often underpinned by:
• Speech therapy, where the patient learns how to communicate again
• occupational therapy, where a patient works on recovering their motor skills
• psychology, where psychological resilience is developed
• a dietitian where any nutrition issues occurring as a result of the stroke can be managed
In isolation, the multi-disciplinary team’s potential in maximising recovery outcomes is limited. Consequently, allied health provides fundamental practice in post-acute care and recovery of functional pluripotential.
2. Allied Health-In Preventative /Community Health
Preventive healthcare is becoming increasingly important as chronic disease diagnosis grows along with our aging populations in Australia. Allied Health professionals are the first point of contact with this healthcare model.
3. Fundamental Part of a Multidisciplinary Healthcare Team.
Modern healthcare is no longer based on the decisions of the individual physician; instead, interprofessional teams are working together in "collaborative care."
In the inpatient and outpatient context, Allied Health professionals are often the glue that binds the patient's care together; their assessment, follow-up, and education help ensure that continuity of care from one interprofessional team to another is in place.
As an example of multidisciplinary care, a patient with cancer may receive care through interprofessional teams (behavioural, diagnostic, rehabilitation) that can include:
• Physician (oncologist) for medical management
• Pharmacist for pain management
• Dietitian for nutritional support
• Psychologist for mental health support
• Physiotherapist for range of motion and mobility
4. Supporting Mental Health and Well-being
The demand for Allied Health professionals, psychologists, counselors, and social workers is increasing as mental health is becoming a larger topic of conversation in our society. These professionals are helping individuals deal with:
• Anxiety, depression, PTSD
• Substance use issues
• Family and relationship concerns
• Work-related stress issues
Support provides less chance of long-term hospitalisation, suicide, and social isolation. Allied Health fits this clinical care and socio-emotional care paradigm, so patients are holistically supported throughout their recovery.
5. Innovation and Technology in Allied Health
Healthcare technology use is growing exponentially, and Allied Health professionals are not slowing down in their technology adoption and use.
• Telehealth platforms are permitting speech therapists and psychologists to deliver services remotely.
• 3D gait analysis lets podiatrists analyse movement issues.
• Electronic Health Records (EHRs) help keep track of the patient's progress in real-time.
This can make patients feel they have better access, even if they live in rural and remote areas, where services are limited and they may only have access to a service face-to-face once or twice a month.
6. Addressing Urban-Rural Health Inequities
Countries like Australia, Canada, and the United States have rural and regional areas often underserved by health care, meaning allied health professionals play a crucial role in serving these areas. Examples include:
• Flying allied health services to remote Indigenous communities
• Outreach physiotherapy clinics to small towns that do not have hospitals
• Mobile occupational therapy units for underserved populations
All of these examples support efforts to mitigate inequities, so that healthcare can be a universal right, as opposed to a right for those who have access to urban life.
7. Job Demand and Workforce Expansion
There is a skills shortage in the global health system for allied health employment. Increasing chronic illness, compounded by the aging population, is driving demand for skilled allied health workers.
Allied Health Careers that are Fast-Growing:
• Speech Pathology
• Aged Care Occupational Therapy
• Clinical Psychology
• Medical Imaging
• Exercise Physiology
The Australian Job Outlook and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics have confirmed that allied health employment growth of more than 14–18% in the next ten years is likely.
8. Education and Training
Much shorter and more responsive than past paradigms of health professional training, allied health courses allow students to get into the workforce sooner, in a responsive training program that can lead to employment opportunities resulting from the education process and under the location-based requirements of allied health educational programs.
• Post-secondary diploma and degree post-secondary education programs exist for allied health professions around the world and across Australia, the UK, and the United States.
• The majority of allied health roles require some placement or clinical placement experience, allowing students to have hands-on involvement in doing the actual work they will take on as a professional.
• While allied health professional education leads into a specific education program for a profession, aligned with a scope of allied health practice, there are continuing professional development (CPD) requirements as part of ongoing career and human endeavor for all allied health professions.
The accessibility of allied health education makes it an excellent career pathway for students seeking a high-impact career pathway that will lead to high levels of job satisfaction.
SkilTrak as Your Placement Provider
At the core of this transition, toward a more resilient, skilled Allied Health workforce, is the requirement of well-planned, quality practical experience, and this is where SkilTrak contributes as a key player. As a placement management platform, SkilTrak connects students, educational institutions, and industries together, facilitating student placements, tracking progress in real time, and making sure students are as equipped as possible for the realities of modern-day Allied Health roles. By promoting experiential learning and professional readiness, SkilTrak enables the next generation of Allied Health professionals to address emerging healthcare needs with skills and empathy.
Conclusion: The Backbone We Can’t Afford to Forget
Allied Health is not ancillary; it is essential. Allied Health professionals are the backbone of the health system. Allied Health professionals keep healthcare systems running, patients recovering, and communities healthy and vibrant.
They are the enablers of rehabilitation, ambassadors of prevention and health, and the conduit between hospital-based care and home recovery after illness. Their goals are to optimise patients' functioning level and to decrease hospitalisation to support a more functional level of healthcare delivery in the community by helping chronic patients who have a pathway to achieve better health and wellbeing outcomes.
Allied Health professionals improve the level of care to people outside of hospitals and clinical situations, and provide targeted approaches to rehab/prevent intervention/reduce use of hospital systems, save an amount of money at an institutional level, and potentially have an effect on reducing morbidity and hence mortality within communities.
One way to the future in Allied Health is a commitment to education, education infrastructure, and career pathways for allied health. Moving forward to support the health services requires consideration of an investment in staff capability, and ultimately, the role of education of healthcare professionals and allied health professionals is key.
Allied Health does not just support health as we used to understand it, it is the new normal in an all-consuming ecosystem.
