14 October 2024

This AHP day our heads of profession are proud to share some amazing highlights from across the Trust. We are aware that there are also many more areas of great practice happening and want to thank all our AHPs, registered and unregistered, for the work they do every day.  Please get together with your AHP colleagues to celebrate AHP day, with a cuppa and a cake in your local teams. Each and every one of you in our AHP family make a massive difference to patients’ lives and CNWL are lucky to have you.

  • Helen Willetts – Chief Nurse
  • Emma Nicklin – Associate Director of AHP’s and Trust Head of Profession for OT
  • Ryan Kemp – Director of Therapies

Here are some of our highlights from 2024.

Physiotherapy

  • Ealing Community Partners (ECP) Pulmonary (PR) Rehabilitation team has been busy working towards their PR accreditation.
  • The Camden Stroke and Neuro team have not only re-opened and grown the Neuro-Active pathway but have also opened Circuit (to provide intensity to our neuro-rehab patients) and a Parkinson’s Disease exercise class.
  • Cardiac rehabilitation in Hillingdon community has been accredited this year again as a Certified service by the British association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR).
  • Ealing MSK are delivering their first Escape pain classes which is one of the key services recommended by NHS England to provide cost savings for the investment used. 

Occupational Therapy

  • Our Occupational Therapy Community remain the largest AHP professional group in CNWL; we are also one of the largest employers of OTs in the country.
  •  Our OT’s are working in every speciality across mental health and community services and as dual trained practitioners have a lot to offer the development of integrated care.  We continue to maintain strong OT professional leadership structures, have a strong OT to OT training plan, are supporting record numbers of OT apprenticeships and are involved in so many areas of service development across our three divisions.
  • Well done to the Inpatient mental health group and the community mental health groups for the ratification of their OT clinical pathway documents; something for us all to strive towards. 
  • BAME OT Network continues to thrive and the Co-Chairs would be delighted to see more staff at the new Peer mentoring sessions that are planned monthly.
  • The OT Falls and Frailty clinical network relaunched in September with so much expertise and enthusiasm in the room.
  • The Sensory Network continues to champion sensory awareness across the Trust with sensory practitioners running training.
  • The OTs in St Pancras Rehabilitation Unit have been involved in a research study with the University of Exeter.  “The RecoverED Study” to identify feasibility of delivering an intervention with older adults after an episode of delirium and the impact this tailored therapy intervention may have on recovery, as part of this research the team are identifying inpatients from the rehabilitation wards and then providing follow up interventions in the community.
  • The Harrow OT Community Team has been running an art project drop in since January, the group aimed to revamp our Harrow services environments through the power of art. Services users met every week at 1pm on Fridays and produced many beautiful pieces of art.

Harrow OT Community Team.jpg Drawing of sunflower.jpg

Speech and Language Therapy

  • Our Ealing team are continuing with the Bilingual Co-worker project in ECP. This work is making a massive difference to community engagement and has just been shortlisted for a CAHPO award – very well done team!
  • Earlier this year we had our SLT conference bringing together SLTs across the Trust to network, share learning and service development, quality improvement and clinical audits. It was a really enjoyable and inspiring day and we had workshops on co-production and health inequalities as well as time with Ryan, Director of Therapies, and Emma, AD for AHPs.

Paramedic

  • The numbers of Paramedics are steadily growing in CNWL. We  now have 14 in total, with 7 working in our Urgent Community Response teams (Milton Keynes, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Camden)  4 working in our Health and justice settings

Arts Psychotherapies

  • Our partnership with Brunel University London is flourishing and this year sees our third intake of Art Psychotherapy trainees onto the joint MA course and we are looking forward to launching the new MA in Dramatherapy training in 2025. The partnership affords a rich and fertile ground for research and clinical-academic developments, some of which can be seen here: CNWL Arts Psychotherapies Research and Education
  • We are in the concluding stages of the ERA trial - the largest arts therapies Randomised Controlled Trial to date, investigating the effectiveness of group arts therapies for people with different types of mental health needs living in the community.  We have many smaller-scale projects as well as an increasing number of post-doctoral and doctoral researchers leading work across the Trust.
  • We are pleased that all four modalities of Arts Psychotherapies – Art, Drama, Dance Movement and Music Therapies – are represented within our adult mental health services.   A recent survey within these services across K+C and Westminster has shown some excellent feedback from patients with 99.1 % patients finding the Arts Psychotherapies helpful to their wellbeing; helpful in achieving the things that are important to them; helpful to participate in the arts making and helpful to reflect on the arts making and 100% reported being treated with Dignity and respect. The Learning Disabilities Arts Therapies Team continue to provide Art, Music and Dance Movement Therapy for the both of the inpatient units.

Arts Psycotherapies.jpg Art.jpg

We have a very active Arts in Health programme, a step-down service from the Community Mental Health Hubs, offering regular creative activities to support adults with lived experiences of mental health difficulties. CNWL Arts in Health

Podiatry

  • The services have moved from prepacked sets of instruments consisting of 4 items to single wrapped instruments.  This enables clinicians to only use the instruments required.   Given the high number of treatments/contacts the services undertake for example for Hillingdon and Camden carryout between 17,000- 19,000 treatments per year, the single wrap instruments not only save costs but reduces sharps clinical metal waste going for incineration, decreasing the carbon footprint and saving the environment. 

In addition, the podiatry services are moving towards Antimicrobial Sprays in clinics for the preparation of feet before treatment reducing the use of Antimicrobial Wipes.

Podiatry services have always been paper light with electronic records, to improve this furthers correspondence such as discharge summaries, to professionals and patients where possible are sent out by email to reduce usage of paper and protect the environment.

  • The Hillingdon podiatry service is now open to a wider range of patients with medical and podiatric need encompassing patients classed as Moderate Risk, High Risk and Active Risk patients requiring wound care and nail surgery.
  • The Camden podiatry service was really pleased to be awarded the Trust ‘Improvement Award’ for their Qi project, ‘Improving the Podiatry-led detection, diagnosis and management of peripheral arterial disease.  Through diagnostic tests for peripheral arterial disease the clinician is also able to detect heart arrythmia in patients, with timely onward referral, the service is able to contribute to the national prevention agenda by early detection in preventing strokes and heart attacks.

Dietetics

  • The dieticians continue to grow in number across the Trust and are doing amazing work across different patient pathways.  We are delighted to welcome to new dietetics professional leadership roles to Eating Disorders and Camden community services.