Laura’s story- celebrating occupational therapists for Allied Health Professionals Day.

In this story: Occupational therapy /

“I want to come to work to do a good job which has a positive impact on people’s lives.”

“I qualified as an occupational therapist 24 years ago. My main motivation to become an occupational therapist was because I wanted to help people, and to make their lives better in some way.

I work for NHS 24 which is one of the special health boards in Scotland; it provides access to information, care and advice through multiple channels including NHS Inform and 111. Mine is a new role to strategically think and develop areas where Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) can have impact.

Although I don’t work full-time in a clinical role, my aspiration is very much still to help people. In non-clinical roles it can be more difficult to see the impact we make as we do not get direct patient feedback; but I believe we do still have impact by improving the health and social care system from a different perspective. I hope the work that I am doing in my current role, such as developing AHP roles and digital pathways, can and will make a real difference to patients and their relatives by improving care and access to information and services.

Since leaving full-time clinical roles almost ten years ago, I have also continued to work clinically as a Bank occupational therapist. Although this may only be one or two shifts a month this is something that is really important to me. I feel it is important and helpful in my day job to remain fully aware of how it feels to be a patient and a clinician within our system and my Bank work helps me to have some level of insight into this.

Ultimately, like most people, I want to come to work to do a good job which has a positive impact on people’s lives. Working in health and social care means that I feel like that is something I can actively achieve on a daily basis”