Celebrating Allied Health Professions Day – 14 October 2024
Allied Health Professions (AHPs) provide system-wide care to assess, treat, diagnose, and discharge patients across social care, housing, education, and independent and voluntary sectors.
Through adopting a holistic approach to healthcare, AHPs can help manage patients’ care throughout the life course from birth to palliative care. Our focus is on prevention and improvement of health and wellbeing to maximise the potential for individuals to live full and active lives within their family circles, social networks, education, training, and the workplace.
An annual day of celebration has been developed by the national #AHPCommunity itself. Quality and safety is the key theme for AHPs Day 2024. This aligns with the AHP Strategy for England (2022-2017) which emphasises the importance of providing exceptional care to the people and communities that we work alongside.
As the third-largest clinical workforce within the health and care, AHPs play a pivotal role in supporting the NHS Long Term Plan.
At NHS Supply Chain we will be celebrating this year with a virtual coffee morning attended by our AHPs and some members of our executive team. We’ll also be listening in to Chief Allied Health Professions Officer, Professor Suzanne Rastrick’s AHPs live address (on Teams) which will take place at 9.30am on Monday 14 October 2024.
See our Useful Links section for the link to this Teams call.

Neha Patel, an experienced AHP who works for us as a Deployment Specialist
Reflecting on being an AHP
As part of our celebration of AHP day, we want to spotlight our six AHPs and the remarkable impact they have on the delivery of care.
Neha Patel

Profile: Deployment Specialist IM. Over three years NHS experience, specialising in diagnosis and management of ocular motility disorders and visual impairment. Specialist orthoptist.
An AHP (Allied Health Professional) is a type of healthcare professional that helps treat, assess, and improve the lives of patients, whilst working as a part of a multidisciplinary team, in a hospital, in the community or a patients home.
My background as an AHP involved working as an Orthoptist, this involved assessing visual function, and diagnosing and managing eye movement disorders.
To me, being an AHP means using my specialised clinical knowledge to improve a patient’s quality of life. Marking AHP Day means, celebrating all AHPs, the people they work with and the impact they make every day, and informing and inspiring the future workforce.
Coming from this AHP background, it was important for me to continue to work in a role where I’m able to prioritise patient safety and experience. And now as a part of NHS Supply Chain, as a Deployment Specialist, I am helping to implement an Inventory Management Solution (IMS) into Trusts, in which a core benefit, is releasing clinical time back into patient facing activities.
This is a benefit I particularly appreciate as I understand firsthand the time and insight required to ensure my colleagues had what they needed, in the right quantities at the right time, to meet the needs of our patients. And now, as a part of the IMS programme it is great to see clinicians and end users realise these benefits, as well as enabling patient-level tracking, supporting the reduction of never-events and recall management.
Neha Patel

Dan Lewin
Profile: Clinical Engagement and Implementation Lead. Over 18 years NHS experience, specialising in musculoskeletal physiotherapy and ergonomics, and human factors.

Ian Dodd
Profile: Clinical Engagement and Implementation Manager. Over 36 years NHS experience specialising in operating theatre practice anaesthetics and scrub, medical equipment management, clinical procurement regional and national programs.

Marc Naughton
Profile: Clinical Engagement and Implementation Manager. Over 24 years of NHS experience, specialising in Acute Care Emergency Medicine.

Raymond Pukacz
Profile: Clinical Engagement and Implementation Manager. Five years NHS operating Theatres and crash team, two years Operating Theatres and crash team in a private hospital.

Simon Ball
Profile: Clinical Engagement and Implementation Manager. Over 15 years specialising in musculoskeletal, orthopaedic and pain management, latterly supporting the diversity of the primary care specialities working as a first contact practitioner in GP surgeries.
Links section
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Chief Allied Health Professions Officer, Professor Suzanne Rastrick's AHPs live address (on Teams)
Follow this link to join the call.
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AHP Strategy for England (2022-2017)
Read more about NHS England's five year strategy for AHPs.
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AHPs Day
More about AHPs Day from NHS England.
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Clinical Team
Find out more about our clinical team here at NHS Supply Chain.