Allied Health Professionals
Available for download
Best Practice Guide Neonatal Allied Health, Psychological Professionals and Pharmacists
We are delighted to share this guide, which sets out best practice for Allied Health Professionals, Psychological Professionals and Pharmacists (AHPPPs) working within neonatal units. AHPPPs play a vital role in improving infant outcomes, enhancing family experience and supporting staff wellbeing. They contribute to early intervention, discharge planning and links with community services, while also helping to improve service efficiency, reduce length of stay and support positive long-term health outcomes.
The best practice guide aims to support commissioners and providers to understand the role of each of the professions, and to support with job planning and bids to develop or enhance provision. Where you already have someone in post the guide can be used to support governance and collect data on activity, as well as highlighting where there are gaps. There are currently no service standards for AHPPPs working in neonatal units and no description of what best practice looks like. We anticipate and would encourage that this document is adopted regionally to progress the agenda of better supporting our patients and our staff, improving care quality and making services more productive, cost effective and safer.
If you have any questions about the guide please contact the lead AHPPPs via the London network.
Key Points:
• Understanding AHPPP provision
• Multidisciplinary Collaboration
• Early Intervention and Discharge Planning
• Professional Infrastructure
• Consideration of universal, targeted and specialist care
Implementation Guide and Audit Tools
The accompanying Implementation Guide provides practical support for services looking to implement the recommendations within the Best Practice Guide. It includes a generic AHPPP audit tool alongside profession-specific audit tools, enabling neonatal services to review current provision, identify strengths and gaps, and prioritise areas for development. Together, these resources support workforce planning, service improvement, governance activities and the development of high-quality, integrated AHPPP services across neonatal care.
Watch our discussion on the guide launch
AHPs are central to the implementation and embedding of developmentally sensitive care into neonatal practice in many neonatal units, and champion the need to view neonatal care that looks forward to improving longer term outcomes for babies and their families.
from BAPM Neonatal Specialties | British Association of Perinatal Medicine
