Dietitian Lisa Hughes is leading a new national framework designed to help improve how AHPs and other health professionals learn from each other's best practice.
South West Peninsula SHA is the strategic lead on the Creating an Interprofessional Workforce (CIPW) programme, working alongside the UK Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE).
The overriding question is: how do professionals fit together to become more than the sum of their parts?
The overall aim of the programme is to mainstream interprofessional learning and development in England, bringing professionals, organisations and agencies together in a more collaborative system.
Programme lead Lisa - a dietitian and educator by background - said: "The overriding question is: how do professionals fit together to become more than the sum of their parts?
'We cannot modernise the workforce without addressing human resources, education and service needs," she said. "
Otherwise we will develop new roles and have no-one suitable to fill them, and people will be trained for jobs we don't have.
"For AHPs, this is at least as complex as for the medical and nursing professions as they develop the roles of advanced practitioners, consultants and assistants.
"The idea that in future every assistant practitioner will be attached to a specific profession is not the case.
"Some will be more flexible. It is a misconception that this will water down the role of the assistant or the professional. Instead, it will hone the professionals' role,"
added Lisa.
More information will be available on the new CIPW website shortly.
