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The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the response and adaption to change of allied health professionals. Understanding how individuals respond and adapt to change is essential to assist leaders to manage transformational change effectively. Contemporary health-care environments are characterised by frequent and rapid change, often with unrealistic and challenging time frames. Individuals operate independently, but also as members of teams, professions and organisations. Therefore, having a sound understanding of individual response to change is important for change leaders. In the Australian context, allied health professionals represent a quarter of the health-care workforce. There is a significant gap in understanding how allied health professionals respond and adapt to change.

A scoping review was designed to report on the nature and extent of the literature on the response and adaption to change in the context of allied health professionals. Change leaders in the health-care environment face a number of complex challenges when attempting to facilitate change. While this scoping review did not identify any specific literature on the response and adaption to change of allied health professionals, it did however provide information on change models and factors to take into consideration when implementing a change process.

The results of this scoping review identified findings in two main areas with regard to response and adaptation of allied health to change: a review of change management literature at the organisation level and change management for allied health. Most of the literature described organisational level change management without providing a structural framework for change. At the professional individual level, the literature focused on specific clinical interventions, rather than on the response and adaption to change for allied health. Minimal literature was identified in regard to the response and adaption to change of allied health professionals. In an environment characterised by continuous change and policy reform, a greater understanding of the response and adaption to change by allied health is a priority for research, policy and practice.

This scoping review was undertaken to explore the response and adaption to change of allied health. It sought to identify the factors that may explain why certain disciplines within the allied health professional group responded to change differently. Scoping reviews do not set out to comprehensively source all relevant literature but rather to ascertain the nature and extent of the published literature in the field. Therefore, it is possible that a systematic review might uncover additional relevant papers. However, this scoping review provides a clear indication of the nature and extent of the literature in allied health.

This scoping review will assist change leaders to gain a better understanding of theoretical frameworks of individual, team and organisational change processes and the impacts these have individually and collectively on change processes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this scoping review is the first of its kind to identify the minimal literature available on the way allied health professionals respond and adapt to change.

The purpose of this paper is to apply an allied health subculture model to clarify key contextual factors that can emerge in the evolution of an allied health subculture as a consequence of deutero‐learning.

Two case studies are compared to illustrate these two extreme variations in deutero‐learning.

The first case – characterised by pathological deutero‐learning – operated within the classical medical model. A learning pathology that developed in this situation was a fractured, divisive, self absorbed work culture. A second case – characterised by positive deutero‐learning – operated within a divisional structure characterized by integrated decentralization. What was learned as a result of operating within this alternative organisational structure is that effective management of allied health recognizes two governance arenas: governance required for managing professionals and governing principles for delivering clinical services. Positive deutero‐learning occurred in this situation rather than the reinforcement of existing learning pathologies.

There are clearly implications of the two structural models for self‐fulfilling prophecies, interpersonal interaction, climate formation and learning pathologies.

During a period of major reform differing outcomes in deutero‐learning in these two cases emphasize the importance of the evolution of appropriate organisational structures in developing a leadership‐driven learning process and creating an environment in which learning can occur.

The added value of this application of deuteron learning is that it unpacks the nature of variations in deutoro learning that can emerge during a period of major reform in the evolution of an allied health subculture.

Allied health professionals are vital for effective healthcare yet there are continuing shortages of these employees. Building on work with other healthcare professionals, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of psychological contract (PC) breach and types of organisational justice on variables important to retention among allied health professionals: mental health and organisational commitment. The potential effects of justice on the negative outcomes of breach were examined.

Multiple regressions analysed data from 113 allied health professionals working in a medium-large Australian healthcare organisation.

The main negative impacts on respondents’ mental health and commitment were from high PC breach, low procedural and distributive justice and less respectful treatment from organisational representatives. The interaction between procedural justice and breach illustrates that breach may be forgivable if processes are fair. Surprisingly, a betrayal or “aggravated breach effect” may occur after a breach when interpersonal justice is high. Further, negative affectivity was negatively related to respondents’ mental health (affective outcomes) but not commitment (work-related attitude).

Healthcare organisations should ensure the fairness of decisions and avoid breaking promises within their control. If promises cannot reasonably be kept, transparency of processes behind the breach may allow allied health professionals to understand that the organisation did not purposefully fail to fulfil expectations.

This study offers insights into how breach and four types of justice interact to influence employee mental health and work attitudes among allied health professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a mixed methods study investigating leadership development of allied health practitioners within a large public healthcare organization in Australia.

The South Eastern Sydney Local Health District Allied Health Leadership Development Program was undertaken with an allied health cohort (n=16) between May 2014 and March 2015 and comprised all-day workshops, action learning sets and individual coaching. Using experiential learning, the program tested whether practice development methods and action learning approaches developed the leadership skills of participants compared with a control group (n=17). Descriptive statistics were collected to evaluate participant and program outcomes. Leadership, workplace culture and engagement measures were analyzed as part of the study.

The Allied Health Leadership Development Program received high ratings by participants. They reported enhanced skills in leading self and others through mechanisms such as critical reflection and facilitation, and greater confidence managing change and with engaging staff, colleagues and patients in decision making, affecting the quality and safety of healthcare. Statistically significant differences were found with transformational leadership elements, leadership outcomes, and measures of workplace culture and engagement after program completion for intervention group participants, compared with the control group.

Results provide new empirical evidence about the effectiveness of using practice development for allied health leadership development.

This low-cost leadership program can be replicated by other organizations.

Outcomes from an Allied Health Leadership Development Program have not been previously reported in the literature.

This chapter draws from the authors’ experiences with service-learning pedagogy in allied health training programs, and illustrates ways in which community-engaged teaching and learning can prepare students to become ethical healthcare practitioners. The authors infuse examples from their own courses throughout the chapter, mostly from the clinical fields of speech-language pathology, audiology, and occupational therapy. However, the chapter is applicable and generalizable to faculty from a wide scope of allied health training programs. The chapter introduces considerations for establishing campus–community partnerships in an ethical manner, as well as ways to foster student self-reflection and critical thinking through an ethical lens. Principles from the codes of ethics of various allied health professions are incorporated throughout the chapter along with examples of how each can be applied in community-based clinical experiences. Through a review of relevant literature, analysis of professional codes of ethics, case-based examples, and a step-by-step guide to course development, this chapter provides readers with a mechanism to ground their courses in professional ethics in a way that is relatable and relevant to students.

The final report for allied health professions Enhance, Include, Evolve: New Ways of Working for allied health professionals (Care Services Improvement Partnership/National Institute of Mental Health in England, 2008a) is the culmination of a journey that the allied health professionals have travelled over the past six years. Their aim has been to refresh practice in the light of recent policies and initiatives and, in particular, New Ways of Working.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse existing clinical supervision frameworks to develop a supervision meta-model.

This research involved a thematic analysis of existing supervision frameworks used to support allied health practitioners working in rural or remote settings in Australia to identify key domains of supervision which could form the basis of supervision framework in this context. A three-tiered sampling approach of the selection of supervision frameworks ensured the direct relevance of the final domains identified to Australian rural allied health practitioners, allied health practitioners generally and to the wider area of health supervision. Thematic analysis was undertaken by Framework analysis methodology using Mindmapping software. The results were organised into a new conceptual model which places the practitioner at the centre of supervision.

The review included 17 supervision frameworks, encompassing 13 domains of supervision: definitions; purpose and function; supervision models; contexts; content; Modes of engagement; Supervisor attributes; supervisory relationships; supervisor responsibilities; supervisee responsibilities; structures/process for supervision and support; facilitators and barriers; outcomes. The authors developed a reflective, supervision and support framework “Connecting Practice” that is practitioner centred, recognises the tacit and explicit knowledge that staff bring to the relationship, and enables them to identify their own goals and support networks within the context in which they work.

This is a thematic analysis of the literature which was argely based on an analysis of grey literature.

The resulting core domains of supervision provide an evidence-based foundation for the development of clinical supervision models which can be adapted to a range of contexts.

An outcome of this paper is a framework called Connecting Practice which organises the domains of supervision in a temporal way, separating those domains that can be modified to improve the supervision framework, from those which are less easily modifiable. This approach is important to help embed the implementation of supervision and support into organisational practice. This paper adds to the existing growing body of work around supervision by helping understand the domains or components that make up the supervisory experience.

Connecting Practice replaces traditional, more hierarchical models of supervision to put the practitioner at the centre of a personalised supervision and support network.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between components of the psychological contract, organisational justice, and negative affectivity (NA), with key employee outcomes (i.e. organisational commitment, job satisfaction, depression, and psychological distress) among allied health professionals.

In total, 134 (response rate of 46 per cent) Australian allied health professional completed a questionnaire.

Multiple regressions revealed that higher NA was associated with lower organisational commitment, lower job satisfaction, and higher levels of depression. The psychological contract variable, breach, was associated with depression. Informational justice was associated with organisational commitment. Distributive justice was associated with job satisfaction.

This research is limited by its cross-sectional design and that the data were self-reported. The results obtained suggest the potential utility of collecting longitudinal data to replicate and extend the results.

While NA may be beyond management control, it may be ameliorated by attention to improving communication of management decisions and by sensitivity to the elements implicit in psychological contracts. The negative consequences of contract breach may be offset by informational and distributive justice.

This study is one of the first to examine multiple measures of the psychological contract in addition to organisational justice and NA. Further, this study adds to the literature for allied health professionals, where little is known about factors contributing to their turnover.

This paper aims to share the findings of a realist evaluation study that set out to identify how to strengthen nursing, midwifery and allied health professions (NMAHP) leadership across all health-care contexts in the UK conducted between 2018 and 2019. The collaborative research team were from the Universities of Bangor, Ulster, the University of the West of Scotland and Canterbury Christ Church University.

Realist evaluation and appreciative inquiry were used across three phases of the study. Phase 1 analysed the literature to generate tentative programme theories about what works, tested out in Phase 2 through a national social media Twitter chat and sense-making workshops to help refine the theories in Phase 3. Cross-cutting themes were synthesised into a leadership framework identifying the strategies that work for practitioners in a range of settings and professions based on the context, mechanism and output configuration of realist evaluation. Stakeholders contributed to the ongoing interrogation, analysis and synthesis of project outcomes.

Five guiding lights of leadership, a metaphor for principles, were generated that enable and strengthen leadership across a range of contexts. – “The Light Between Us as interactions in our relationships”, “Seeing People’s Inner Light”, “Kindling the Spark of light and keeping it glowing”, “Lighting up the known and the yet to be known” and “Constellations of connected stars”.

This study has illuminated the a-theoretical nature of the relationships between contexts, mechanisms and outcomes in the existing leadership literature. There is more scope to develop the tentative programme theories developed in this study with NMAHP leaders in a variety of different contexts. The outcomes of leadership research mostly focussed on staff outcomes and intermediate outcomes that are then linked to ultimate outcomes in both staff and patients (supplemental). More consideration needs to be given to the impact of leadership on patients, carers and their families.

The study has developed additional important resources to enable NMAHP leaders to demonstrate their leadership impact in a range of contexts through the leadership impact self-assessment framework which can be used for 360 feedback in the workplace using the appreciative assessment and reflection tool.

Whilst policymakers note the increasing importance of leadership in facilitating the culture change needed to support health and care systems to adopt sustainable change at pace, there is still a prevailing focus on traditional approaches to individual leadership development as opposed to collective leadership across teams, services and systems. If this paper fails to understand how to transform leadership policy and education, then it will be impossible to support the workforce to adapt and flex to the increasingly complex contexts they are working in. This will serve to undermine system integration for health and social care if the capacity and capability for transformation are not attended to. Whilst there are ambitious global plans (WHO, 2015) to enable integrated services to be driven by citizen needs, there is still a considerable void in understanding how to authentically engage with people to ensure the transformation is driven by their needs as opposed to what the authors think they need. There is, therefore, a need for systems leaders with the full skillset required to enable integrated services across place-based systems, particularly clinicians who are able to break down barriers and silo working across boundaries through the credibility, leadership and facilitation expertise they provide.

The realist evaluation with additional synthesis from key stakeholders has provided new knowledge about the principles of effective NMAHP leadership in health and social care, presented in such a way that facilitates the use of the five guiding lights to inform further practice, education, research and policy development.

The purpose of this paper is to classify and describe the purpose of ward rounds, who attends each round and their role, and participants’ perception of each other’s role during the respective ward rounds.

A literature review of face-to-face ward rounds in medical wards was conducted. Peer reviewed journals and government publications published between 2000 and 2014 were searched. Articles were classified according to the type of round described in the study. Purposes were identified using keywords in the description of why the round was carried out. Descriptions of tasks and interactions with team members defined participant roles.

Eight round classifications were identified. The most common were the generalised ward; multidisciplinary; and consultant rounds. Multidisciplinary rounds were the most collaborative round. Medical officers were the most likely discipline to attend any round. There was limited reference to allied health clinicians and patient involvement on rounds. Perceptions attendees held of each other reiterated the need to continue to investigate teamwork.

A collaborative approach to care planning can occur by ensuring clinicians and patients are aware of different ward round processes and their role in them.

Analysis fulfils a gap in the literature by identifying and analysing the different ward rounds being undertaken in acute medical wards. It identifies the complexities in the long established routine hospital processes of the ward round.