Dr Caroline Taylor
NAPC Chair
I attended this year’s RCOT conference and took part in a panel discussion about how to optimise occupational therapy workforce planning and delivery.
I previously worked with OTs during covid when I had been brought into hospitals to help discharge planning. I also worked with the profession in community-led intermediate care, where the OTs were able to work with complex patients, bringing lateral thinking about problems and practical solutions that people need.
Occupational therapy was essential to me to get patients back into their own homes and staying in their own homes. They were knowledgeable, person-centred and fun to work with.
When I got the chance to set up a personalised care team in a PCN, I employed an OT to lead the team which also included care-coordinators and social prescribers. The OT had the experience and expertise to work with the more complex patients.
But other parts of the system didn’t understand her full scope and it was difficult for her to do her full job. I think we were ahead of our time and the preconceptions at the time meant they didn’t know what an OT could do.
Based on my experience, this is my advice for OT in primary care:
- You need to learn how to sell the role with clear, simple messages about the value of OT and what it adds to primary care teams: your specific niche can decrease the workload of the rest of the team. OTs more than pay for themselves over time as they free up time for the team, let alone the patient impact you have.
- Talk to commissioners about the functions teams need to fill. Tell them about the benefits in terms of patient outcomes that are under OT care: keeping people out of hospital; keeping them away from GP appointments; keeping them well and doing their lives; activating patients and teams.
- In terms of outcomes, you’ll be recording the number of contacts OTs are having with people in the electronic care records. Look back at those people: what happened in the six months prior to contact with the OT and then six months after the OT contact? Look at a range of variables; bed days; readmissions; A&E attendance; waiting lists; GP consultations; use of Med3 (fit note); items prescribed- there’s lots of data there. A data analyst will help pull it off and make sense of it. You could also compare by roughly matching characteristics, those who had OT and those who didn’t, so you have comparative groups.
- Finally, there’s scope for OTs to produce much more material on the internet providing excellent information for patients, families and carers about how to keep doing everyday activities. GPs would love this as we could direct appropriate patients to it to help them.
More information about the NAPC here: Home – National Association of Primary Care (napc.co.uk)
More info about occupational therapy in primary care here: Occupational therapy in primary care – RCOT
If you question, contact genevieve.smyth@rcot.co.uk.
