Role Overlap and Professional Boundaries: Future Implications for Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy in the NHS: Forum

Abstract

Summary Traditional assumptions about professional roles and structure in the modernising National Health Service are being challenged. The changing nature of healthcare, the increase in the older population, and staffing implications are all key issues affecting the future of occupational therapy and physiotherapy as future separate professions. These complex changes are potentially threatening for these professions as they currently exist. It will, therefore, be necessary to find solutions to these issues if the healthcare labour force is to be responsive to meet the challenges ahead in the changing NHS. Role overlap, role confusion, fragmentation of therapy services, shared learning and a melding of the core skills and philosophies of occupational therapy and physiotherapy are the drivers for change and modernisation discussed in this paper. The paper offers the suggestion that occupational therapy and physiotherapy undergraduate education programmes should be combined. It also recommends that a creative, independent and comprehensive review of future workforce planning should be undertaken and states that the real way forward is towards the creation of highly skilled rehabilitation therapists who would be truly responsive to the needs of service users.