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Rad Chat is a forward-thinking global knowledge hub where healthcare professionals can advance their knowledge and expertise in radiotherapy and oncology by utilising the award winning, first therapeutic radiographer led oncology podcast and social media channels.
We're empowering healthcare professionals worldwide by providing free, CPD-accredited radiotherapy and oncology education, by sharing real-world experience, expert insights, best practice and patient perspectives, we're helping healthcare professionals’ advance cancer care and improve patient outcomes.
Jo McNamara Rad Chat Host (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome to Rad Chat, founded by me, Jo McNamara.
Naman Julka-Anderson (00:04)
And me, Naman Julka-Anderson. Rad Chat is a forward-thinking global knowledge hub where healthcare professionals can advance their expertise in therapeutic radiography and oncology. Unlike traditional academic resources, we blend real-world experience, expert insights, best practice, and patient perspectives.
Jo McNamara Rad Chat Host (00:21)
We make advanced knowledge engaging and accessible, supporting continuous learning and professional development without compromising patient care or your personal time by providing insights into both technical skills and career development, helping you to progress confidently in your field and shape your professional future.
Naman Julka-Anderson (00:38)
Just to let you know, our episodes may contain sensitive and difficult topics that you might find distressing or triggering. Please consider checking out another episode.
Jo McNamara (00:47)
So this episode is part of the Education and Workforce Development series, where we're going to be hearing from our guest, Chris Tuckett, a physiotherapist who's currently undertaking his PhD. Welcome, Chris.
Chris (00:57)
Hello? Hi both.
Jo McNamara (00:59)
Thank you so much for coming on Rad Chat. We are really excited to have some AHP chat. So for anyone listening, that's Allied Health Professions. So you absolutely will hear us referring to AHPs all the time. But Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself and your career to date.
Chris (01:17)
Sure, yes I am an AHP but I'm a physiotherapist by background so that's where my bias lies. Apologies now if I refer to physio a bit more than the AHP family but yeah my background I guess MSK physio is where I specialised and after a little bit of time, like most junior physios looking for the next step and I did get a band 6 role in MSK but then I was looking around for something else to do and nothing was coming up in my department so...
I saw a role advertised for a, well it was a nursing role at the time, a falls prevention lead. I thought I'd give it a go. You know, I thought, know, it's worth a try. And they kind of called my bluff and gave me the role. So I spent five years in the kind of falls space, which I actually really enjoyed, you know, that whole kind of falls prevention and that kind of geriatric care was an area I really enjoyed. That kind of turned me on to the whole patient safety sphere
and after four or five years in that full space, again looking for the next kind of step for a of a band 8a kind of role and nothing was in my trust and so I saw a role advertised for NHS England and that was in their patient safety directorate. Just before that whilst I was doing my fulls kind of stuff I did my MSc at Nottingham University in patient safety and quality improvement which was nice kind of broad degree and I think that helped me get the patient safety role NHS England
which was unexpected, heading down to London to work there for a couple of years, that turned out to be in the neonatal maternity kind of area of patient safety, which as a physio, an MSK physio by background and a kind of geriatric kind of physio, it wasn't my area of specialism at all. So the steep learning curve, but really enjoyed it. And obviously I was there to apply the principles of patient safety and quality improvement of the post-clinical stuff
it's still a of a steep learning curve speaking to midwives and consultants delivering the babies and things. But yeah, I really enjoyed that. And then a couple of years after beginning that role, I saw a job advertised for Associate Director of AHP's role. This was in the Community and Mental Health Trust. And again, like most of my career, I thought, I'll give it a go. And I got that role and that was my first step, I guess, properly
into a leadership role, AHP leadership role. So in that role, we had, I think, nine or 10 of the professions, depending on how it was counted, from the AHP family. And so that was my first exposure to really trying to be the spokesperson and kind of advocating for a broad family of HPs. Learned huge amounts in that role. And then I stepped up into the director role after a couple of years and spent about five years as director of HPs. I guess potted throughout all of that.
Whilst I was in my junior physio role, I was working part time for Tesco still for the first five, six years of doing my physio degree, qualified. And then I also worked for Nuffield Health, the private provider of healthcare. So I did a couple of days a week for them. So I had that of private insight and I did get involved with agility, the specialist network for physios working with older people.
So I was their editor of their journal for a couple of years as well. So that kind of potted throughout. And then also a physical activity clinical champion for Public Health England for about two, three years. So kind of a part-time kind of hourly role where you'd go out and train peers in how to use physical activity as a clinical intervention. So yeah, a bit of a zigzaggy career. Yeah, physio kind of safety and then AHP leadership. And now we...
moved down to Brighton, so were based in kind of North East London, Essex at the time. So because of that move, that's why I left my directorate HP's role after five years, moved down to Brighton and I'm now doing my PhD, as you mentioned Jo, at City St George's and that's looking at the acceptability of healthcare interventions. And I'm also now working part time for the CSP as a research advisor as well. So yeah, got kind of the two hats to wear at the moment. So yeah, that's me.
Naman Julka-Anderson (05:39)
If we take you back, why did you pick Physio and not another AHP group?
Chris (05:44)
Yeah, it's a good question because I don't really remember even being aware of the AHP family. So, know, when I was, you know, choosing my A levels and things, I remember there was kind of a crossroads point when I was sitting in front of my head of year, my parents behind me for parents' evening, and they were like, what are you going to do? And I kind of had a decision to make between drama and English or kind of biology and kind of physics. And at that point...
I kind of said physio because I spent a bit of work experience with the physio and so then they guided me down the science route whereas you know in my mind I still like the whole English kind of art side of things but um but yeah so physio it was but yeah there was just no awareness I don't think of any other allied health profession at that time really so I had a bit of exposure to sports and things so I liked lots of physios at the time before you know more about the profession you can kind of go into it from a sports perspective but
don't realise how much more there is beyond that but yeah for in terms of allied health professions there just wasn't really the awareness of it.
Jo McNamara (06:48)
So Chris, I got to hear about you and your specialist knowledge and expertise from LinkedIn. So you're
Chris (06:56)
Okay.
Jo McNamara (06:57)
quite active, aren't you, on LinkedIn? And I absolutely urge any healthcare professionals who are interested in what we talk about on the podcast today to go and follow you on LinkedIn, because it is really insightful. How have you found utilising that as kind of a platform to share?
your musings around
Chris (07:19)
You
Jo McNamara (07:19)
AHPs and you know...
Chris (07:21)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, think
using is a good term because it is a lot of just my thoughts on it. So I don't I wouldn't advise anyone to go there necessarily to get, you know, robust research or evidence based practice. But it's definitely lots of thinking going on there. And I just find it helpful for me. As I said, I like writing, I like English, so I find it helpful to write, to process my own thoughts. And I've kind of always done that. And so, you know, social media, I don't like that term necessarily, but
I used to use Twitter quite a bit as kind of at Health Physio at the time. I think it's still live, but I haven't touched that for a year or so now. So looking for another platform and LinkedIn tended to feel a bit more professional. I only ever really used it from a professional perspective, kind of networking, you know, seeing what other people are doing, sharing work. So I found it useful to learn. I also found it useful to share what we were doing, whether professionally, you know, what we were doing at work, et cetera. yeah, I use it mostly as a networking tool.
And yeah, a learning tool and it does help you to reach a wider audience. You do connect with people that you wouldn't have the ability to connect with very easily normally. Yep, example here. But then you find people reaching out to you, which is I think LinkedIn is, because I only really started using LinkedIn probably about a year ago, probably. I had a account for long time, but hadn't really used it until coming off Twitter. And so I kind of said, right, I'm going to try and do it bit more, you know, a bit more routinely.
And then obviously do my PhD leaving my one job coming to another job I had lots of stuff going around in my head to to kind of put down and then the whole AHP value agenda Felt like something which had a lot of kind of meat on the bone to talk about and it seems to a chord with a few people Because I think it's it's a newer area to be speaking about from an AHP perspective. So I do it for my own Benefits. I enjoy doing it
then other people seem to you know find it useful as well which is always nice so yeah I'd recommend it
Naman Julka-Anderson (09:25)
You talk about AHPs don't struggle with impact but more with proving it. What do you mean by that?
Chris (09:33)
I think as AHPs we all inherently know what we deliver on a day day basis so if I think back to my time as an MSK physio or a kind of full practitioner I was very aware of you know I was doing good work and I could have that interaction one to one with a patient or in a group setting with a group of patients or with the carers or just colleagues and you felt that you were delivering good stuff and you were having an impact
when I went into the full space that's when I first started to see cost a bit more explicitly attached to some of the thinking because in the falls you know we have the national audit of inpatient falls and there's very explicit costs attached to something like a hip fracture or a head injury that often results from a fall so that's when costs started coming to my thinking a bit and then going into the maternity space and I think it's still the case that
the NHS spends more on the outcomes of poor maternity care in terms of compensation, they do actually on delivering maternity care. so costs feature really heavily there. And then coming back into the AHP space as an AHP leader, it suddenly struck me that I'd been exposed to cost in the last two roles, but then when it coming back into the AHP world, it wasn't really thought of again. So.
Again, we're all very aware of the individual level of our impact, but I think that cost element of our impact has always been a bit neglected. There's probably lots of reasons for that, but we're aware of our impact on the patients. I think we are all aware on delivering good clinical outcomes, but I think that cost-effective bit is just a bit neglected, and I think that's a key part of our impact, which either we don't think about, we don't get taught to think about it, I don't think. As an undergraduate, wasn't ever something that was mentioned when I was...
learning about physiotherapy and I almost feel that some clinicians feel it's a bit of a dirty word almost I think as well so they don't want to be delivering to a cost you know it's about the patient it's about the clinical outcomes which is true but I think cost is a neglected factor I think.
Jo McNamara (11:52)
I think we definitely see it in oncology where we absolutely can see the impact of certain interventions for
Chris (11:59)
Hmm.
Jo McNamara (11:59)
our patients, but measuring that from a cost perspective or in lots of NHS trusts,
bed saving, it just doesn't feature, it doesn't work with maybe the impact that we are having. And as an example, we quite often on Rad Chat talk about prehabilitation and rehabilitation. And as a patient's going through...
radiotherapy, they don't always necessarily have access to say a physiotherapist but actually if you could have regular physio throughout that cancer treatment the likelihood is that patients will then continue that treatment and therefore finish cancer treatment hopefully with less of a risk of going on to develop some of the late effects
around things like, I don't know, frozen shoulder, obviously it depends on where you're treating, but I'm thinking of maybe a breast cancer patient who's maybe having physiotherapy to the shoulder. But it's those kinds of cost analysis that is just really difficult to prove because it's not, it doesn't sit with us in radiotherapy, it sits six, seven, 10 years later.
Chris (13:09)
Yeah.
Jo McNamara (13:10)
And trusts don't operate like that, do they?
Chris (13:13)
No, exactly. think that's where I think you touched on the real important point now. I the reason it can feel invisible or more intangible is because often the gains, the true gains that we deliver as HPs are quite delayed. So we're talking about old prevention piece. It can feel like it's a long way off from, it's not cash releasing, as I like to say. I think it can feel quite diffuse as well so that...
you know, we often think about it from a clinical perspective, we want to have that impact on the patient, but all those downstream costs, once that patient goes to other services who are probably benefiting in some way from the work that we've done as HPs previously, because we've prepared that patient, they're a bit fitter, they're a bit stronger, they're a bit more, you know, mentally well, perhaps. And so the downstream treatments are more impactful and effective as well. That can get lost, the different services they interact with. And then when we start to pull those improvements
across kind of a, whether it's an organisational or a cross organisational level or a system level. And again, they all become a bit more diffused again. It can be really hard to think that's because of the care I've delivered, you know, weeks or months previous, it does get very difficult. I think there are, there's a growing awareness I think that we can be better at capturing it, I think.
Naman Julka-Anderson (14:34)
Do think it's something in how we collect or collect the data? Obviously some of this is going into the realm of health economics as well, which is a bit of a buzz term at the moment for people to justify their own workload or costs of productivity.
Chris (14:47)
Yeah, definitely. it's always a, I mean, me going into this whole value kind of discussion, I always have to flag that I'm not a health economist at all. So it's, you know, it's a bit of a hobby horse out of an interest, but you know, people should definitely go away and do their own work and, you know, work with their finance teams who are the experts. But I think there is something about us providing that kind of strategic and clinical knowledge about the impact we are having on a patient and the patient's journey
and then pairing that up with the knowledge from our finance teams in our different organisations who are able to help us quantify the costs and the improvements and help us track those changes. So I think those two coming together can be really powerful. we do have a perspective to share with the finance people and the finance people have a perspective to share with us. As often, I think we've just kind of handed the cost of over to the finance teams and either gone to them for permission to do something and let them go on with the calculations. I think there's something about us really getting together and doing that.
But I think the whole productivity agenda, I think it's something which, you know, I think there's a worry about it. I think people feel that it's almost something which is gonna be used to make them work harder. So there's a fear around productivity, the whole conversation. And I think that's because it's been used quite bluntly. I think it hasn't really been spoken about in a way that will allow staff to engage with it and to
feel welcoming of it. So I think that's down to us as leaders potentially and the whole kind of agenda that's going on at the moment. But productivity essentially should mean that the staff are able to work optimally to deliver the best for themselves and their patients. That's what productivity should mean. But unfortunately I think it's kind of tangled up with the whole activity agenda instead and so people see it as just a stick to beat them with to get them to do more
where the most healthcare staff will understandably say that we can't do any more and that's where the whole productivity stuff gets really messy and I think it becomes a barrier for us to then speak about I think.
Jo McNamara (17:07)
So Chris, tell us a little bit about your PhD. What is it that you're doing?
Chris (17:12)
So I am looking at the, well, I'm looking at the theoretical framework of acceptability, so it's called the TFA for short. So it's a tool which allows you to assess if a healthcare intervention is acceptable from a patient or a clinician perspective. So it's building on the work of my supervisor, Dr. Mandy Sekhon and she released or kind of created the TFA back in about 2017
and at the moment I'm looking at how it's been used. So it's essentially a questionnaire and you can apply it to any healthcare intervention and find out if it is acceptable. it's always a funny term, think, acceptability, because it can seem like quite a innocuous term, not a very powerful term. If you say something's acceptable, it tends to mean it's a bit, nah, it's all right. But I think if you think about the opposite of that, something unacceptable, then actually
that's not gonna fly, that's not gonna work. If a patient finds something unacceptable, they're not gonna adhere to it, they're not gonna accept that as treatment. It could be the best treatment in the world in terms of effectiveness, but if a patient finds it unacceptable, they're not gonna engage with it, and so you might as well not bother. But also from a clinician perspective, again, might be the best clinical tool in the world, but if the clinician finds it unacceptable to use or to apply or to be able to explain to a patient what it is, and again, it's not gonna get
used. So it's a tool to hopefully allow us to decide if it is acceptable. And so at the moment I'm just looking at how it's been used in the literature back from 2017 to now. And positively it's been used a lot. The downside of that is means I've got a lot of papers I've got to read and trawl through. So at the moment I'm kind of extracting about 690 full text papers, is fun, but it means it's been used a lot. So that's a good thing.
And then I'm going to interview some patients, clinicians, some other kind of academics about the tool, find out what they like about it, what they don't like about it, should it be refined? Because essentially, acceptability itself is broken down into lots of different constructs. So I won't go through them all, maybe because I can't remember all seven, I'll stop my head. But things like the ethicality, does it align with someone's ethics? Or opportunity cost? Does it require the patient to give up?
Something else or is it just too much effort for them or is there a financial cost to it? So there's lots of different constructs within that as to why it would be acceptable or not. And as an example, something which seems to be coming through that's missing at the moment is safety. That's not a construct at the moment, so that might be something which ultimately, after I've done the review and I've done the interviews, I might add into that potentially, or there might be some stuff I take out of it. So at the end of my three years, I wanna have a more refined tool.
So that people can use easily and then some guidance around it and also I'm going to do the psychometric validation around it so check its reliability you know all that kind of stuff so yeah I like to think it's quite a broad topic I think
Naman Julka-Anderson (20:25)
So when you say un-acceptability, what could that be? Like, from a clinician point of view, they don't like the font or something, or is it actually more detailed than that just for people listening?
Chris (20:35)
Yeah, so it could be anything really. So it could be, from a physio perspective, we were, I don't know, administering a walking program, I suppose, build up one's fitness or strength, if it required them to buy equipment, then they might find that unacceptable. Or if we were asking them to do too much too soon, that might be unacceptable. If they didn't understand it, that might be unacceptable. And there's also something interesting called
intervention coherence. So does the patient understand Why what we're asking them to do will help their condition? So if I say lift this weight that will help you get stronger I would expect most patients to understand that but if I said, you know try catching this ball. This will help the opposite side of your body because you know There's that probably won't link up quite as well and we need a bit more explanation to that to make it acceptable. So
there's lots of things reasons why a patient might find any intervention unacceptable But also as I said from that clinician perspective It might just be something which takes too much time for them to administer to a patient if you've got you know 15 minutes or 10 minutes or less with a patient then having a 60 item questionnaire to administer that's going to be unacceptable in a lot of situations, so it's quite context specific and then there's all these constructs within it, but again these are the things that might change when the
the final version of the tool gets refined and released to the public.
Jo McNamara (22:10)
You sound like you're really enjoying it. What's been the highlight of doing a PhD?
Chris (22:14)
Oh, no, at the moment, a highlight seems a bit of a stretch. I definitely recommend it.
Jo McNamara (22:18)
hahahaha
Chris (22:20)
mean, it's not, you know, I've always wanted to do a PhD just because I like kind of, like studying and reading and writing. So I felt that was something I'd enjoy. And then you haven't done the BSc and the MSc, it kind of felt like the next logical step. Research was that pillar of practice, which I've always felt was a bit neglected anyway. You know, I've kind of done the clinical stuff, I've done the education, I've done
well, I haven't done the research yet and I've done the leadership bit, so it's the research bit I always felt was lacking. So those are two reasons for it. But I think the complexity of a PhD, and I would encourage anyone to do it if they're interested because in terms of the complexity of what we're dealing day to day as clinicians, it's no more or less complex than doing a PhD. The only difference is from a PhD is you're throwing yourself into much more depth into one very narrow kind of field of study.
That's the bit I'm finding challenging because I like to kind of, flip between different stuff. So you know, I've got work going on, I've got writing some stuff on LinkedIn, and blogs, or I'll be, know, family stuff, and just reading for pleasure. So being able to commit full time to reading 690 papers, for example, it's just that full immersion into a topic, it's, at the moment, it's a challenge for me. But you know, I'm doing it, and I shall complete it.
But it is really nice to be able to, when you find the time, to be able to completely immerse yourself into one topic and really get into the weeds of it because it's rare you get the chance to do that. So I'd recommend doing a PhD, you know, I think anybody can do it, even who's a clinician for sure. But it is just about preparing yourself to really get right into the weeds of a very niche topic. You need to be interested in that topic you're gonna be researching.
Naman Julka-Anderson (24:04)
I suppose with your experience in clinical but also in director roles that will really help with the interviews. So getting the most out of the people and kind of guiding the conversation and kind of the motivational interviewing aspect probably as well.
Chris (24:15)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. mean, yeah, the whole kind of, you know, qualitative interviews are something which I haven't done yet, but I've got a good, at least 15 coming up. It's going to be interesting. And, you know, I've got my kind of topic guide and everything written out and I've got these things, you know, these key points I'm supposed to hit, but I'm sure when I'm actually in the interview process and I've got to allow it to take its natural course, all my plans might...
might fall away but I'll see how that goes. I'm looking forward to it because it'll be interesting to see what people's perspectives on it are because most people who I introduce the TFA or the theoretical framework of acceptability to they look at me with a bit of a blank face so but it is being used out there because the literature tells me it's been used quite a bit so it'll be interesting to get people's thoughts on on it.
Jo McNamara (25:03)
What do you think you're going to do once your PhD is done? Have you already started thinking that or is that too far in advance?
Chris (25:11)
Yeah, I mean, it does feel a little bit far in advance, but then, you know, I'm already a year through and it's to be a three year programme. So then you got a couple of years left in theory. I haven't ruled out going back into kind of NHS leadership role potentially, because I'd like to think I can, you know, apply the skills and that kind of thing that I've learnt in my PhD to a leadership role. Obviously I'm working for the CSP at the moment. And so, you know, being a research advisor for them
it complements my research role and my PhD so those kind of two fit together quite nicely and you know really enjoying kind of being as part of that professional body because that is a perspective I've never had before so I'd really recommend that if anybody gets the chance to see how you know professional bodies work from kind of the other side of the curtain because you know that's a quite a unique perspective and I haven't thought about it yet I think if I want to get the PhD kind of done
and then, I don't know, might take a breather for a bit but then, know, who knows what comes up because my career so far really has been about seeing opportunities and saying yes to them. It sounded like I'd said yes to everything and then got given the job. There'd been lots of jobs I did apply for and I didn't get, I should say that as well by the way. You know, there was lots of stupid jobs which I went for and you don't get but I think it's all a good learning experience. So, I don't know, I went to a conference today, wide health, a digital conference about healthcare.
And there's lots of stuff going on in that digital space at the moment. And the advent of AI and one of the tools which is coming through my PhD quite a lot is the use of digital tools and how patients find that. And then with the creation, the NHS Digital Hospital coming online, or supposedly coming online very soon, there'll be stuff in that space. So yeah, I think there's lots of opportunities. But we'll wait and see.
Naman Julka-Anderson (27:02)
You can't talk about anything without bringing AI in. But I suppose with
Chris (27:05)
Yeah, exactly.
Naman Julka-Anderson (27:06)
AI with productivity, there's the stuff of cameras watching baristas to see their level
Chris (27:12)
Yeah.
Naman Julka-Anderson (27:13)
of productivity, things like that. Like, they've been 10 % slower than usual. That's probably the concern, isn't it, around productivity for health care professionals anyway. And I mean, even now when you work on teams, it says that you're away, but you just haven't had teams open. But that's another way to measure productivity in some certain aspects as well.
Chris (27:30)
Yeah, exactly. And again, I think that that kind of all bleeds into that whole negative association that people naturally develop with the term productivity because of stuff like that. Whereas actually that is just monitoring activity. And of course you can have all the activity in the world, but still have very poor quality outcomes if that activity is misplaced. Whereas actually you can have quite low activity levels and have very high quality outcomes if that activity is well placed. So
it's about having the optimal level of activity and the optimal kind of staff environment so that staff can deliver their best care. And I think that's kind of the conversation we need to push as much as possible. Because I think for HPs particularly, we are good value. And I think value is a bit of a term that has lot of negative associations with it. But actually, you know, if we think about having...
I would think that kind of three measures that hold patient experience and perspectives are really key. The clinical outcomes are really key. And again, that cost effectiveness measure, we are good value compared to our kind of medical kind of colleagues. And I think there is lots that we can deliver that we currently don't deliver. And I'm not talking about, you know, role substitution. I'm just talking about optimising clinical care. And if we can deliver more care, we tend to be doing it from, I think,
more from the patient perspective around maximising quality of life, maximising independence, maximising function. And when you speak to individuals, most patients rate quality of life over extension of life. And so think AHPs really speak to that on their behalf. And I think productivity, if it's framed correctly, is good for staff wellbeing as well, because staff want to go to work and feel they're being productive in terms of...
delivering good quality care for themselves and for patients. And so I guess my whole thing is about almost rescuing that term productivity from the fires so that we can turn it into something which really speaks to our strengths as HPs.
Naman Julka-Anderson (29:39)
I think productivity also stretches to...
your client, service user, patient as well. Like I always remember when I was a student, one of the clinical nurse specialists said to me, you don't look very happy, so you're not giving good care. Like if you go in a restaurant, if someone doesn't smile at you when they serve your food, it doesn't taste as good. And that kind of stretches to productivity, that if you don't believe in the treatment you're telling your patient, or you don't have the full knowledge behind it, or you're rushed, you're not going to give the same amount of care to that person in front of you. It kind of, yeah, it swings in both directions, I would say.
Chris (30:12)
Yeah, completely. think productivity is something which if we get it right, it's good for the staff because they feel they're maximising their impact for their time. But it also means that we're delivering better care for patients. so whilst we hear about the long waiting lists and the administrative burden that the NHS is under, which are then placed often on the patients, if we get all that stuff right, then enhanced productivity is better for the staff, but also better for the patients.
I think our ambitions are aligned there, but it's just trying to avoid that misuse of the term productivity, think, which happens unfortunately too often still.
Jo McNamara (30:57)
So Chris, for any AHP students out there who are thinking about kind of going into a profession that maybe that role doesn't at the minute measure anything around impact, what advice would you offer them?
Chris (31:13)
I think it's worth thinking about what you think your impact is and from a clinical perspective that's normally fairly clear cut and then just either go away and have a little thing map out where you think that impact may be, what could be coming off of that so if you are somebody who's helped a patient with low back pain say reduce their pain, okay you've reduced their pain but what does that mean for that patient are they now lot more likely to
return to work? Are they more likely to have improved mental health? And you know, you can, there's lots of offshoots from that, where you could potentially start to see more value. And you know, if you're a band five or band six kind of physio, you may feel there's no need to kind of cost that. But I think it's really good to start thinking of that, you know, as early as possible. Because then, you know, you can start to get involved in discussions around the impact of the department you're working in, and the
and identifying the hidden values that you're bringing to services. Then you can speak to the service leads, talk to them about trying to cost it up. With all the AI tools that are out there now, you can put this information into AI, along with anonymize, and you're talking in generic terms. You can find costs for certain interventions quite easily, often on NHS tariffs and things. So have a play with it, see what kind of business cases it spits out
obviously verify all kind of the sources of information, but you'll be surprised as to how you can start to cost out your impact and then take that to your finance teams and say, I think, you know, we're having this value, we're delivering this added value. if we were, and that's when you can start to identify opportunities. And if we were to have this extra physio or this occupational therapist or this visual language therapist in team, then I think we could add further value here because at the moment we're not meeting this particular patient need
and then the story starts to grow I think. yeah, pick a patient condition, pick an outcome that you think you're having and then just try tracking it to see what comes off of that. Have a bit of a play with the tools that are available now and then you can start to find this kind of value narrative in the care you're delivering and then you can kind of decide to take it to kind of supportive kind of leaders and peers within your organisation and that starts to grow I think.
Jo McNamara (33:39)
And just think in a couple of years the AI might be using your tool Chris.
Chris (33:43)
Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah.
Jo McNamara (33:47)
So Chris to end the podcast we always finish with top tips. What top tips would you like to give the listeners?
Chris (33:56)
I think from a value perspective, I think as AHPs we often, rightly we think about a holistic perspective. But I think for value, and if you're trying to cost something, I think we need to learn from marketing a little bit and think about really distilling our message down to a very simple message to begin with. just take one clinical outcome, I think
from a falls perspective, that's very simple, reduction in falls, and then follow that through as far as you can and identify the costs with that. So I think just picking one outcome and costing it, and you'll be surprised how quickly that adds up. And then of course you can start to stack other ones on top of that. I think we often feel that we have to be too complex or we have to do the whole thing in one go. We've actually just picked one clinical outcome, the one that you think is most obvious
and just try costing that and you'll be surprised at how quickly those savings add up before you then move on to another one and another one. But I think just move away from thinking you have to cost the whole service or the whole kind of impact because just picking one condition and one outcome, it can have an impact I think.
Jo McNamara (35:10)
Amazing. Thank you so much. Really appreciated it and I know you said it's just your...
Well, I use the term musings, but they are really insightful musings and they're really helpful, especially when documents land, guidelines land that affect AHPs. I really take a lot of value from kind of reading what you post. So please do go and check out Chris's LinkedIn page. So a
Chris (35:30)
That was good. Thank you. Thank you both.
Jo McNamara (35:36)
huge thank you again to our guest, Chris Tuckett, for sharing his career journey, practical ways to evidence AHP productivity and impact and lessons for AHPs going forward.
So thank you all for listening to Rad Chat with me Jo McNamara and Naman Julka-Anderson.
Jo McNamara Rad Chat Host (35:53)
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Naman Julka-Anderson (36:12)
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Naman Julka-Anderson (36:45)
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Jo McNamara Rad Chat Host (37:00)
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