Abstract
Introduction: National Healthcare Group (NHG) has taken a strategic approach to nurture and harness the potential of our diverse Allied Health Professionals (AHP) workforce, ensuring their readiness for current and emerging healthcare demands in four key practice areas: Clinical Practice & Improvement, Education, Research & Innovation, and Leadership & Management. The evolving health landscape in Singapore presents increasing healthcare demands and emerging roles and shifts in required skill sets. This necessitates shifts in mindsets and practices for capability building of AHPs. Effective change management is crucial to support 2000 AHPs from 11 selected professions who provide care at primary care, acute and community hospitals, and national specialty centres to develop and plan their contributions to deliver greater impact to our health system and population.
Method: NHG's journey in building AHPs’ capability aligns with Kotter's Change Model, though some deviations and challenges were encountered in the process. This methodology ensures a strategic, cluster-wide approach to navigate the complexities of change and ensure successful implementation.
The urgency to nurture AHPs for current and emerging demands was conveyed to senior management, AHP leaders and HR leaders. A core team of AHP leaders representing 11 different professions and senior HR leaders shared a common vision and took a collaborative approach to align on an overarching Career Development Framework (CDF).
AHPs' concerns and inputs were gathered through surveys and focus group discussions to ensure the CDF addresses the needs of AHPs. Engagements with AHP leaders, HR leaders, and senior management were held regularly. This culminated into the AHP CDF that was endorsed at the cluster-level and progressively implemented from July 2023.
Other key success factors include ensuring flexibility for unique contextualization within the overarching framework; focusing on empowering staff to shape contributions; an implementation guide for consistent follow through; tailored sessions to support supervisors to guide staff in career planning; and Town Hall sessions to facilitate dialogue between senior leaders and AHPs.
Results: The NHG AHP CDF provides a common language to articulate and demonstrate the impact of diverse AHPs; a consistent professional development approach across different professional groups, specialties, institutions; and learning and developmental opportunities to support AHPs in the four key practice areas mentioned. AHPs can look forward to greater clarity in setting goals for professional development and evaluation; more support for learning activities to meet development goals; and opportunities for differentiated career pathways. Positive feedback received include increased clarity of contributions and development, and confidence to implement the framework in practice.
Next steps: The next phase involves evaluating the impact of CDF and ensuring continuous support for supervisors to sustain the shift in practice to build AHPs’ capability. NHG plans to integrate HR analytics in assessing AHPs’ and supervisors' perception and readiness of using the CDF, and further articulate the operationalisation of CDF in policy updates.
Conclusion: In summary, NHG's journey in implementing a cluster-level framework for AHPs reflects a strong commitment to effect change collectively and the importance of strategic engagement, strong communication, implementation support, and continuous evaluation for sustained impact.