Post-professionalism and allied health

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-190
Author(s):  
Susan Nancarrow ◽  
Alan Borthwick

This chapter explores post-professional roles in detail, and the implications of these roles for the allied health professions generally. One relatively unique feature of the allied health professions is the extent of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary working across the continuum of professionalisation. These trans- and interdisciplinary relationships can be negotiated at a team or institutional level; however, they are also formalised into recognised training structures and professional hierarchies, particularly in the fields of diabetes education, mental health and in generic assessment and case management roles, such as with the National Disability Insurance Scheme in Australia and with intermediate and transitional care for older people in the UK.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Susan Nancarrow ◽  
Alan Borthwick

This chapter introduces how the book compares the allied health professions, both as a collective and as individual disciplines, in Australia and the UK. Australia and the UK were chosen as a basis for comparison because the allied health professions have emerged in each jurisdiction from similar philosophies, regulatory structures and training approaches, which allows meaningful comparison. The different funding and system contexts provide a comparative basis to understand the impact of different features on allied health professionalisation. It starts from the position of the similarities between the allied health contexts in both countries. Politically, neo-liberalism has been influential in driving the healthcare funding models and accountabilities in both nations, though different healthcare funding systems have facilitated varied flexibilities within the allied health workforces in each context. The modern allied health professions were heavily shaped by the formal organisation of labour that emerged within the colonies of the British Empire as a result of the Industrial Revolution. This book is largely focused on the way in which the allied health professions have emerged and developed within a Western context.


2021 ◽  
pp. 27-56
Author(s):  
Susan Nancarrow ◽  
Alan Borthwick

This chapter examines the concept of allied health as a confederation of constituent professions. We examine: the way that different jurisdictions define the allied health collective; the rationale for those groupings; and the impact of inclusion (or otherwise) of the groupings on the individual professional project of specific allied health professions. Concepts that will be explored include the considerations around a heterogeneous group of occupations attempting to work together to achieve a single professional project. It also also explores the international contexts of the allied health professions and the relevance of the specific comparisons between Australia and the UK.


2021 ◽  
pp. 191-202
Author(s):  
Susan Nancarrow ◽  
Alan Borthwick

This concluding chapter considers the policy and practice implications of the preceding chapters. Despite the prolific use of the term 'allied health', the analysis brings the reader no closer to a unifying definition of the confederation of allied health professions. It is clear that allied health professionals are distinct from medicine and nursing; however, those professional boundaries are beginning to blur as allied health professions take on traditional medical roles, such as prescribing and point-of-care testing. Despite their largely successful professionalisation strategies, the allied health professions still face many challenges in influencing service delivery in a way that optimises the use of their services. Despite many common origins to both the Australian and UK health systems, the divergence of the two systems after the Second World War created some significantly different contexts for the evolution of allied health. A defining feature of the UK NHS is the provision of almost all personal care through the health and social care portfolios. These portfolios help to create a singular definition of 'health' and 'social care', and, with few exceptions, most allied health is provided within the 'health' portfolio. The Australian system, in contrast, is highly pluralistic and there is no legislatively endorsed central recognition of or endorsement for the collective allied health professions. It remains likely that the allied health professions must continue to assume that to be a professional means to act professionally, to observe and maintain standards of behaviour that fit the image of professionalism, to construe their actions as altruistic, and to promote a service ethic and orientation.


1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol A. Brown

As health services have become hospital-centered, many specialized health occupations have been created. The author maintains that these allied health occupations conflict with the medical profession for occupational territory, and that the development of these subordinate occupations has been controlled by the medical profession to its own benefit. This control is achieved through domination of professional societies, education and training, industrial rules and regulations, and government licenses. Detailed examples of the process of control are provided from the fields of radiology and pathology.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Nancarrow ◽  
Alan Borthwick

Drawing on case studies from optometrists, physiotherapists, pedorthists and allied health assistants, this book offers an innovative comparison of allied health occupations in Australia and Britain. Adopting a theory of the sociology of health professions, it explores how the allied health professions can achieve their professional goals.


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