AHP WRaP: Priority Setting Exercise

Background and Justification: There are several known AHP workforce challenges (e.g. recruitment, retention, career progression, lack of diversity, staff health, wellbeing and morale) which may vary by profession and workforce setting. No previous work has systematically identified and prioritised the evidence uncertainties or unanswered questions related to the AHP workforce. WP 1.1 is an extensive consensus building project to identify national AHP workforce research priorities, underpinned by robust scoping of relevant literature, funded projects, and professional body and commissioner strategies. The team consulted with the NIHR James Lind Alliance (JLA) https://www.jla.nihr.ac.uk/about-the-james-lind-alliance/ and has provisional approval to undertake a JLA Priority Setting Partnership (PSP). PSPs aim to address the mismatch between what researchers choose to research, and what patients and health professionals want to know, providing a valuable opportunity for the end users of research to help shape the research agenda. They also provide ‘collateral benefits’ for individuals and organisations involved, and for funders and commissioners, including greater collaborative working and cultural shifts. The PSP methodology is well established, offering a rigorous and transparent process with support of an independent JLA advisor who will chair monthly meetings of a PSP Steering Group. The group (12-15 members) will be drawn from the Partnership Management Board / Stakeholder Advisory Groups. The PSP project will be led by Nightingale and supported by a PSP Co-ordinator (Etty) who has previous NIHR project management and quantitative data analysis experience. An Information Specialist with extensive PSP experience will be sourced through the JLA Secretariat, supporting evidence reviews and survey analysis. A PSP Operations Group, led by co-applicant Strudwick, will support the Information Specialist in understanding the AHP research settings and associated workforce terminology. The PSP exercise normally takes 12-18 months, though the JLA advise that with significant resource available we will be able to complete the exercise in the first 12 months, followed by dissemination to 15 months. The PSP will follow the following steps : i) Establish the Priority Setting Partnership (setting up the PSP steering group, agreeing the protocol, induction / training for key staff) ii) Gathering uncertainties (via a national survey) to collate the AHP workforce-related questions that patients, AHP workforce leaders and AHP staff want research to answer. This survey will be widely distributed to workforce leaders, AHP professionals and patients and public, via our wide networks, including partner ICS/ICBs, regional PPIE Groups, Clinical Research Networks, AHP Federation and professional bodies, NHS Employers, NHS England, Council for AHP Research, and the Council of Deans for Health. iii) Checking uncertainties (including evidence appraisal), agreeing which are in-scope and which are out-of-scope, grouping them and developing summary questions for each group, removing questions that have already been answered by research. iv) Interim priority setting by workforce leaders, AHP professionals and patients/public via an online ranking survey, voting on a long list of questions (typically 50-70 questions) to generate a short-list (typically 20-25 questions). v) Final priority setting at a workshop of workforce leaders, AHPs and patient representatives (~30 members), agreeing a top-ten list of questions from the short-list. vi) Publishing the prioritised Top 10 uncertainties, all the questions in the long list and the original uncertainties and alerting research funders and researchers to the prioritised topics. vii) Thinking about and addressing the longer-term impact of priorities. In the AHP Workforce PSP, this may be negotiating with partners, funding bodies and health commissioners which of the priorities the Partnership may take forwards.