O-043 Growing Occupational Health (Oh) Clinical Workforce, the Future Role and Utility of Allied Health Professionals (Ahp) and Other Emerging Job Roles

Introduction We explored opportunities, barriers and enablers to growing a multidisciplinary occupational health workforce. Methods Mixed methods Results 30/127 OH departments contributed workforce data. We found wide variation in staff composition and job roles. Nursing and medical staff were the dominant staff groups, with psychologists, physiotherapists and health and wellbeing advisors the most common AHP and emerging roles. Only 2/10 systematic reviews found moderate-to-strong evidence regarding the effectiveness of non-OH multidisciplinary interventions delivering work-focused support. Seven interventional studies showed it’s clinically- and cost-effective to train non-OH workers and those with no prior health training to deliver OH support. Fifty participants took part in the qualitative work. They identified a range of underrepresented AHP roles and specific OH job functions which AHPs and others could undertake. Cultural and structural barriers hamper efforts to grow the multidisciplinary OH workforce, including legacy issues; poor understanding of what clinical skills AHPs and other trained workers can offer; lack of core OH education and training; and poor career transition pathways. However, local workforce initiatives have been successfully developed e.g. establishing specialist or dual OH roles for AHPs, and introducing an apprenticeship model to support AHPs to transition into OH roles. Discussion Overall, we found enthusiasm among OH leaders to explore opportunities to grow the multidisciplinary OH clinical workforce however cultural and structural barriers need to be overcome. Conclusion We propose the need to conduct a root and branch review of OH service functions and to map these to the skills and competencies across nursing, medical and AHPs job roles.