The WOW Show – 20-minute programme

Thanks for the lift, guys. Welcome to The Wow Show. I bet you think BNHS is all about doctors, nurses and hospitals, right? Wrong. There's an army of skilful and dedicated practitioners who play a vital role across our health service. They're called Allied Health Professionals, or AHPs for short. There's over 150,000 of them, working in hospitals, patients' homes, clinic, surgeries and schools. They're helping change millions of lives for the better. There are 14 different Allied Health Professionals. You could be a music therapist, or an art therapist. You could choose to be a drama therapist, or not to be. That is the question. Or how about a dietician? There's occupational therapists, operating department practitioners. Osteopaths. Orthoptists. There are paramedics. Podiatrists. Prosthetists and orthotists. Radiographers. Speech and language therapists. And let's not forget physiotherapists, like me. So, as an Allied Health Professional, you could be working in any one of a huge range of fantastic roles. Later in the show, we'll find out a lot more about these exciting professions. And with the help of a panel of experts, we'll be able to answer some of your questions. But first up, what have Harry Kane, Darcy Bussell and Mo Farah got in common? Yep, they all have famous feet. But what about our own feet? We often take them for granted, until there's a problem. And that's when we need a podiatrist. I'm a Great Britain age group triathlon, a silver and bronze European medallist over sprint and Olympic distance. It puts a lot of strain on the body, especially the feet. Well, as a podiatrist that's very much specialised in the sports industry, I see a lot of runners, Premier League footballers, golfers, cricket players, triathletes. Because of the orthotics, I'm running better, I'm not having weaknesses or injuries like I was. So I'm getting stronger and faster. Podiatrist is a specialist in all things to do with the foot, whether that's the circulation, the joints and muscles of the feet. The feet are an amazing piece of your anatomy, that if they're not functioning right, can really affect your quality of life. As a podiatrist, you can work in a hospital setting, out in community clinics, or even visiting patients at home, or like myself, set up a sports injury clinic. I would assess a patient and decide what they needed. I might need to use my prescribing qualifications, some nail surgery to help them. It could be orthotic therapy, where we prescribe insoles to help people's feet. Because I specialise using a gait scan pressure plate system, diabetics and your high risk patients that are struggling to get the right orthotic prescription, want to come and see me to see if we can offload pressures that are causing them problems with their feet. So the last few years, I've definitely started to use social media more. A lot of new patients have found me through social media, just by sharing what I do in clinic. I'm a runner myself, so I tend to share things in terms of injury prevention and management. Definitely social media now has become part of my job, in terms of encouraging people to see what podiatrists do. Every day is completely different. The patients that I see are completely different. The sports patients are perfect for me because they'll come in very frustrated or down because they're injured. And as a podiatrist, I feel like I definitely make a contribution to fixing them and getting them back doing what they love. Hey, what's up? Sorry, I was miles away there. Yeah, music, along with art and drama, can affect us deeply. And all three of these are used by professional therapists to improve people's emotional health and well-being. Check this out. Music therapists use music to help their patients open up and express their emotions through sounds. Music helps develop communication, confidence and self-awareness. Music therapists build relationships without using words, allowing anyone to access it. It isn't about teaching clients to actually sing or play an instrument. It's about communicating through improvised music with real instruments and the voice. For anyone affected by a learning disability, mental health issue or physical illness, or finding it difficult to express emotions, working with music therapists can literally be life-changing. Art therapy uses creative and psychological techniques to help people who have experienced distressing or traumatic life events or live with life-limiting conditions. Art therapists need a degree or experience in art and use a range of creative techniques, but clients don't need to be good at art. Art therapists work alongside their clients to explore the meaning of their artworks and to support self-awareness and resilience. Drama therapists, too, thrive on helping others with their feelings. They use improvisation, movement and storytelling to engage with their clients. This provides a safe environment to help people communicate difficult feelings. For some people, acting out their experiences is much easier than directly talking about it. As a drama therapist, you work with clients who have a broad range of difficulties, such as psychological and mental health issues, physical and learning disabilities. I'm Han, and I'm here to see the radiography team today. All I know is that they use x-rays, so let's go and find out more. So, what are you doing here? Today, we've just done a chest x-ray of this patient. Can you tell me what I can see here? These are her two lungs, and this is the patient's heart. This is air in her stomach. If there's something wrong, usually we write a red dot and then we call up the doctors to let them know. Perfect. So, we're going to do a scan of your chest today. So, Tom, you're a diagnostic radiographer. What does that mean? So, our job is to create images of patients with potentially illnesses or serious life-threatening conditions. So, you've got loads of cool equipment here. Can you tell me a bit more about it? So, this is a CT scanner. It uses x-rays to create 3D pictures of patients. We also use x-rays, magnets, as well as ultrasounds. What surprised you the most about your role? I was not aware that we had to go to theatre as part of our job to help out with broken bones and things like this. Thank you, Tom. So, now I'm going to see the therapeutic radiography team. Enjoy. Bye. I was with the diagnostic radiographers. You're a therapeutic radiographer. What's the difference? So, a diagnostic radiographer is more about the imaging of patients and a therapeutic radiographer is the treatment mainly of cancer patients and we use high-energy x-rays to deliver that treatment. So, you can use radiotherapy to treat cancer. Can you tell me how that works? It's high-energy radiation, so it can penetrate the skin. Radiation that we give is absorbed by the body. The normal cells have the ability to repair from the damage, whereas cancer cells don't have the ability to repair from that damage. We're really lucky in this department to have proton therapy opening in 2020, but also the Christie's in Manchester have it and they're already up and running. So, I've learnt so much today. I didn't realise there were two different radiographer roles and how varied they both are. Want to know what it's like being a student at AHP? Let's meet some of them. You don't have to have all eight stars to get to where you want to be if you want to be an allied health professional. Find whatever it is you're strong at and whatever you feel the most passionate about and go with that. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it. I got told in school that I would never go to university and that I was making things difficult for myself applying for physiotherapy. Although I didn't do that as my first degree, I've achieved it eventually. I would just look into different opportunities. There are apprenticeships, there are university courses. There's something for everyone who wants to get into an allied health profession. You can be the difference between good care and bad care and the way that the patient receives that experience. And you've still got that feeling in your chest that I've done something to help someone. I'm part of something good. Break your arm playing rugby like I did or go down with the flu. People can clearly see there's something wrong. But mental health, that's not always so obvious. It can affect the way you feel and the way you behave. That's where occupational therapists like Usman Ali come in, helping people to live the best life they can. Jason is an individual that I've worked with who has experienced anxiety. He was avoiding going outdoors, avoiding any kind of interactions with people who he didn't know. So I looked at what he thought his barriers were to engaging and then we set what we call SMART goals. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time goals. How are you feeling about going into the shop? Yeah, not too bad. So we started very simple, which was getting out to the front door and then we built on that to getting into the local shops to then be able to go into the local shopping centre independently, which is what our end goal is with Jason. Still fine. Cheers, pal. Thank you very much. Occupational therapy is a profession in which we focus on activities and occupation as a means of enabling people to promote their independence and improve their quality of life. We can work in a range of different clinical areas. At the minute, I work in the community mental health team. People often assume occupations are jobs, but for an occupational therapist, the occupation is about the activity. So that can be broken down into three different areas. Self-care, that can include washing and dressing on a morning. Productivity, work would come into the productivity as well. And then leisure as well. So what do they enjoy doing? What I enjoy most about my job is working with the people. Obviously, we've got the stool, we've measured it to make sure it's the right height. How has that helped you? It's a gem. I never thought I'd need one, but I do. It's independence. It's all mind over matter as well. It's fun. It's really meaningful when you support someone to achieve their goals and increase their independence and their quality of life. Well, I call him Superman. I know I'm nowhere near that as confident as I was, but I'm on my way. And that's towards me. Do you have great interpersonal skills, patience and dedication? If so, physiotherapy might just be for you. As a physiotherapist, you'll treat people with physical caused by illness, injury, disability or ageing. You'll be assessing patients' problems and coming up with the right kind of treatment or programme to suit their needs. As well as treating patients with things like exercise or hands-on therapies, you'll be helping get them back to living the life they want to. Osteopaths are hands-on, regularly using a wide range of techniques that focus on releasing tension, stretching and massage to relieve pain, aid blood flow and help the body's own healing mechanisms. Osteopaths take a holistic approach. It's based on the principle that a patient's health depends on everything, the skeleton, muscles, ligaments and tissues, all functioning smoothly together. It's possible that you've never even heard of prosthetics and orthotics, but as well as being a pretty good tongue twister, this area makes for a really interesting career. Prosthetists design and fit artificial replacements for people who have lost or were born without limbs. This, of course, gives freedom and independence, enabling people to work, live and play. Orthotists will treat people of all ages with a physical problem. They assess how you move, diagnose mechanical problems and prescribe, measure and then customise a brace to fit your body. These orthoses are used to support the spine or limbs to relieve pain and assist movement. Training as a prosthetist or orthotist will provide you with the skills to make a lifelong difference to people's lives. You'll learn about linking anatomy, physiology, biomechanics and even engineering. And you'll find out the huge impact that these amazing appliances can have on a person's life. Some people are obsessed with food. Apart from giving us pretty pictures, food is vital for our health, but it can be confusing. There's a lot of information out there about what is and isn't good for us. Dietitians understand the science behind what we eat and they use this to help people make the right choices for their health. As a teenage and young adult dietitian, I've set up these cookery classes called Eat It Better. We chat about what a balanced diet is and how to achieve that. And then we all learn to cook a couple of dishes together. It seems to have worked really well. Dietitians are qualified health professionals who work with individuals to improve their diet. We play a huge role in prevention, making sure people are following the right diet because that can prevent chronic diseases like heart disease or diabetes. I'm a haematology dietitian and that means that I work with people who've been diagnosed with blood cancer. I'm just gonna go through a few things about your diet. Monica's been there from the very beginning and she's helped me to not only regulate my diet and gain weight, but she's also helped me with managing my side effects. Monica gives me advice and printouts of different food groups. I create like plans for the week of things that I would eat. When someone's on the wall, they quite often lose their appetite or they feel sick. But the thing is, it's so important to keep eating because without the food, you're not gonna be able to get better essentially. So it's trying to work with people to figure out ways where they can eat more. Sometimes we use special nutritional supplement drinks which have extra vitamins and minerals in. I think what I really like about this job is it's so varied. I work with the media. I've put together different things for journalists or worked on a couple of programs. I work with different charities. So I've written some diet information for them. So it just really keeps you on your toes. I don't think I could ever have done a desk job. You're always moving around and you're interacting. So the days fly by and I don't think I'm ever bored. It's such a great job. You can go home every day and you feel like you've actually made a difference to people's lives. Believe it or not, 2.5 million people in the UK suffer from speech or language difficulties. This can lead to feelings of isolation and educational problems. But with the right help, these issues can be overcome. And that's where speech and language therapists come in. They work with children whose speech is slow to develop, people with a stammer or the elderly whose ability to speak may be impaired by illness. Speech therapists work in hospitals, community clinics and patients' homes. If you have excellent communication skills and enjoy helping others, this could be the ideal job for you. Working as a paramedic is not all blue flashing lights and high-speed driving, but it's still a pretty exciting career choice. Paramedics are medical professionals who specialise in emergency response. They have to make quick decisions that can literally mean the difference between life and death. Modern paramedics can be found in a variety of different roles and places, such as GP surgeries, sporting events, or working for search and rescue. You're forgiven if you've never heard of an orthoptist before. Orthoptists diagnose and treat people with issues that affect eye movement and visual development. These can be caused by problems with brain development or brain control of the eyes. Orthoptists help the eyes work together again as a pair. As an orthoptist, you'll usually be part of the hospital eye team, but may work on the wards, in community healthcare, or in schools. But wherever you work, you'll make a real difference to people's lives. Imagine what it's like to have an operation. Scary, right? Well, help is at hand. There are these amazing people called operating department practitioners, or ODPs for short. They're with the patient before, during, and after their operation. They're experts in what goes on in the operating theatre and a friendly face. The ODPs are a key member of the team. You need to be able to react to difficult situations, have a really close eye on the patient, who is the number one priority. My main aim is to provide patient safety and welfare. On a normal working day, I'm based as an aesthetic ODP, so I'll be working most of the time with nurses and anesthetists, but you can work in accident and emergency, intensive care unit, and surgery and recovery. Normally, a patient comes in really shy, scared at the same time, so we talk about their favourite subjects at school, favourite food they're gonna have, just to distract them. I want them to feel comfortable. When the patient's asleep, we go straight in the theatre, transfer the patient into the operating table, and perform the procedure. I need to assist the anesthetist and basically maintain patient safety. But if you're an ODP on the scrub side, you'll be assisting surgeons, so you'll be more past instruments to the surgeon. They have to count the instrument to make sure that there's no instrument left inside the patient. As an ODP, I think you have to be compassionate, hardworking, dedicated, respectful, and able to work in multidisciplinarity. The best bit of my job is knowing that the patients are all fine and okay by the end of the procedure. It was nice because before, he was distracting me when they were putting needles in my hand, and I knew who he was afterwards when I was really tired, which was nice. ODP job is very rewarding. Being appreciated by my team members, the parents, and the patients themselves is very fulfilling. So, as you've seen, there's a huge number of choices if you're considering a career in healthcare. And the best thing about it, you can make a real difference to people's lives.