Category: #MyEyesMyOrthoptist

On the 14th of October, we will be joining with the 13 other allied health professions (AHPs) to celebrate the 6th annual AHPs’ Day.

AHPs are the third largest clinical workforce in the NHS, with significant opportunities to support delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan. AHPs Day is an annual occasion for AHPs, started in 2018 and now celebrated internationally, to unite and revel in their contribution. This day offers a platform to spotlight the remarkable impact AHPs have on the delivery of care.

The collaborations across services, organisations, regions, and nations allow us to achieve:

• Reinforced awareness about the vital roles of each of the individual Allied Health Professions.
• Highlighting local service achievements and their profound influence on patient care and public health.
• Collaborative efforts with other services and organisations for integrated working.
• A showcase for those considering a career as an allied health professional.

Key messaging this year for AHPs’ day include Celebrating who AHPS are; Appreciating AHP skills and impact on care; Inspiring our future workforce; Connecting so that AHPs are included in workforce transformation and pathway redesign in systems.

What’s going on?

Following the recent publication of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, the focus this year is to highlight the synergy with the ‘enhanced foundation’ from the AHPs Deliver strategy of AHP Community: the right place, the right time, the right skills as the theme, acknowledging the impactful skills in patient care; inspire the future workforce; and foster connections that ensure AHPs are integral to workforce transformation and pathway enhancements within systems.

The Chief Allied Health Professions Officer (CAHPO) will be delivering a live address to the AHP workforce at 9:30am on 13th October 2023. Plans for both the CAHPO office celebrations, and local and regional events are being shared on the established AHPs’ Day network on FutureNHS. If you would like to get involved in the network to share ideas and draw inspiration for your own acknowledgement of the day, you can email seniorahp-manager@future.nhs.uk.

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If you are interested in finding out more:

Read about the background to AHPs day here.

Join the AHPs Day network on FutureNHS

Download BIOS posters and infographics

New to social media? Read our beginner’s guide

Find out how else you can get involved …

Find out what’s happening and how to get involved this World Orthoptic Day, including the IOA’s ‘Orthoptists in the Wild’ selfie competition.

World Orthoptic Day falls on the first Monday of each June and is a day when orthoptists globally promote their profession and cerebrate the fantastic work they do.

It is organised by the International Orthoptic Association (IOA), made up of 15 member national professional organisations and 6 associate member organisations.

What’s going on this year?

As always there’s plenty going on this year but much of the focus will be around the IOA’s two competitions, designed to get orthoptists around the world talking about what they do and raising awareness.

#orthopticselfie

The world famous IOA orthoptic selfie competition is back once again. This time the theme is, appropriately, “Orthoptists in the COVID Pandemic’. No prior photographic experience required, just get out your camera phone and post your best pic on Twitter with the hashtag #orthopticselfie. There’s even a Kay Pictures treasure box as a prize!

It would be great to see loads of entries from BIOS members, so please do make sure you tag us (as well as the IOA) when you tweet and we’ll make sure we share them with the world.

Find out more here.

The Orthoptic Tetris Challenge

It couldn’t be simpler: Get all the equipment you use in a work day, lay it out in a grid pattern, take a picture of it.

Again, share your picture on social media, this time with the hashtag #orthoptictetris, tagging us and the IOA; we share it with the world; you win a prize from Kay’s Pictures.

More information (if you need it) is available here.

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If you are interested in finding out more:

Find out more about Orthoptists and what they do here.

Find out more about IOA World Orthoptic Day 2021 here.

Interested in becoming an orthoptist? Find out how on our careers pages.

Want to get involved on social media?

Much of the fun on World Orthoptic Day, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, is online. If you’re not already active on social media, there could not be a more perfect time to start! More Orthoptists on social media means more people talking about orthoptics – this can only be a good thing for the profession.

In order to support you, we’ve put together a (very) brief introduction to getting started on social media, including an overview of the main platforms, tips on getting started and guidance on keeping professional.

Take a look at our guide here and consider getting involved in the build up to World Orthoptic Day 2021.

Promotional Resources

If you want any further inspiration for promoting Orthoptics on June 7th, take a look at the following:

• Promotional resources, highlighting the importance of orthoptics
• Careers resources
• Find out about our current campaigns and policy work 
• Our public information is hub is full of accessible information on orthoptics
• You can watch our videos from previous WODs on our YouTube channel here.

If you have any questions or there’s any way we can help, please do get in touch by emailing richard.huzzey@orthoptics.org.uk.

On the 14th of October, we will be joining with the 13 other allied health professions (AHPs) to celebrate the 4th annual AHPs’ Day.

AHPs are the third largest clinical workforce in the NHS, with significant opportunities to support delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan. AHPs’ Day is an annual opportunity for AHPs to come together and celebrate being part of the AHP family, and the day gives an opportunity to showcase to others the impact they make to the delivery of high-quality care.

The collaborations in services, organisations, trusts, regions and nationally enable:

• Improved awareness of the role of the fourteen allied health professions
• Showcasing the achievements of local services and their impact on patient care and population health
• Integrated working with other services and organisations

Key messaging this year for AHPs’ day include Celebrating who AHPS are; Appreciating AHP skills and impact on care; Inspiring our future workforce; Connecting so that AHPs are included in workforce transformation and pathway redesign in systems.

What’s going on?

The Chief Allied Health Professions Officer (CAHPO) for England will be delivering a live address to the AHP workforce at 9:30am, and livestreaming the CAHPO awards Ceremony at 6:15pm. Email england.cahpo@nhs.net for joining details for both livestreams.

Further plans for both the CAHPO office celebrations, and local and regional events are being shared on the newly established AHPs’ Day network on FutureNHS. If you would like to get involved in the network to share ideas and draw inspiration for your own acknowledgement of the day, you can email seniorahp-manager@future.nhs.uk.

A careers Q&A session has been organised by NHS Education for Scotland. This will involve a panel of Allied Health Professionals responding to questions about AHP Careers which have been sent from anyone considering a career in one of the AHPs. This will be hosted on YouTube on 14th of October 2021. Further information is available here.

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If you are interested in finding out more:

Read about the background to AHPs day here.

Join the AHPs Day network on FutureNHS

AHPs Day Scotland – information and resources

Download BIOS posters and infographics

New to social media? Read our beginner’s guide

Find out how else you can get involved …

We’re looking for someone passionate about rising awareness of allied health professions to write a series of blogs demonstrating the positive impact that Orthoptists in Scotland have on the health and well being of patients.

You’ll receive experience and guidance in writing blogs, CV enhancing national exposure and profile, the gratitude of fellow AHP clinicians and get paid for your time!

Background:

Project Aim: To increase awareness of AHPs among the public and policy influencers by generating a widely accessible bank of “stories” which demonstrate AHPs positive impact on health and wellbeing outcomes.

Allied health professions (AHPs) have a major role to play in offering transformational health and social care services to improve health and wellbeing of the people of Scotland. This includes health promotion and preventing ill health as well as contributing to the improvement of both physical and mental health and wellbeing of people of all ages across Scotland.

An increased awareness of the actual and potential roles for Allied health professions amongst both the general public and crucially policy makers and service leaders will help to ensure AHP input and impact is maximised to the benefit of all stakeholders including service users, operational and strategic services leaders. Sharing positive impact stories among AHPs themselves will also help to spread evidence based good practice across Scotland.

The AHP Directors Scotland Group (ADSG) and the AHP Federation Scotland (AHPFS) have agreed to do a joint project to generate a bank of AHP positive impact stories for use on social media, in policy documents, presentations etc. – wherever it is beneficial to demonstrate the sort of impact AHPs can and do make on health and well-being outcomes.

The project proposed seeks to compliment and provide material for the AHP Social Media group which is being co-ordinated by the Scottish Government’s Chief Health Professions Officer in collaboration with ADSG and AHPFS.

The task:

• All writers must provide at least 5 stories by Friday 6th December 2019 and at least 1 of these by 10/10/19 (in time for AHP Day on 14/10/19)
• Blog stories must conform to key messages and “blog / story” quality criteria.
• The method “Blog” story writers gather or generate the stories will be determined by them and their professional body contact.

Support:

“Blog” story writers will;

• Receive guidance on how to write good blogs.
• Be supported by a contact in their own professional body
• As a joint AHP Directors Group / AHP Federation Scotland project, local AHP Directors are also aware of and supportive of this project.

Benefits

• “Blog” story writers will gain blog writing guidance and experience; CV enhancing national exposure and profile and the gratitude of AHP clinicians, users and leaders across Scotland.
• “Blog” story writers will be paid £400 for their time.

Person Specification:

“Blog” story writers should ideally fulfil the following person specification.

• Be an HCPC registered Orthoptist or undergraduate student in Orthoptics
• Be based in Scotland
• Be familiar with health and / or social care and / or education policy in Scotland – and know what is likely to appeal to audiences such as the public, national and local government, MSPs and other key stakeholders
• Ideally have experience of writing short, persuasive, evidence based stories, leaflets or blogs
• Be demonstrably enthusiastic about promoting AHPs and the need of all AHP service users.

To apply to become the “Blog” story writer for BIOS get in touch with Rich Huzzey by Monday 21 October 2019  on richard.huzzey@orthoptics.org.uk with your current job role and a brief (100-200 word) description of why you are interested in this role.

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Not in Scotland? We’d still love to hear your stories. You can download a template here.

Find out about our work promoting Orthoptics on our Policy & Campaigns pages.