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The purpose of this study is to review evidence on the nature of effective leadership in interprofessional health and social care teams.

A critical review and thematic synthesis of research literature conducted using systematic methods to identify and construct a framework to explain the available evidence about leadership in interprofessional health and social care teams.

Twenty-eight papers were reviewed and contributed to the framework for interprofessional leadership. Twelve themes emerged from the literature, the themes were: facilitate shared leadership; transformation and change; personal qualities; goal alignment; creativity and innovation; communication; team-building; leadership clarity; direction setting; external liaison; skill mix and diversity; clinical and contextual expertise. The discussion includes some comparative analysis with theories and themes in team management and team leadership.

This research identifies some of the characteristics of effective leadership of interprofessional health and social care teams. By capturing and synthesising the literature, it is clear that effective interprofessional health and social care team leadership requires a unique blend of knowledge and skills that support innovation and improvement. Further research is required to deepen the understanding of the degree to which team leadership results in better outcomes for both patients and teams.

Comparing outcome data derived from patients receiving treatment in different sites can identify different practice worthy of further examination. This paper illustrates an approach to benchmarking with data collected on 1,711 patients who have received occupational therapy in nine healthcare trusts. Detailed results of 288 patients indicate that there were differences between the services in the patients referred for occupational therapy, they were discharged at different points in their recovery and different amounts of gain were achieved during the treatment period. In order to interpret the reasons for the variation meaning needs to be added to the data. While casemix is an important consideration and may account for many of these differences, it would also appear that investigation of the different processes of care in different trusts may warrant further study.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/14664100010343890. When citing the article, please cite: Pam Enderby, Alexandra John, Anthony Hughes, Brian Petheram, (2000), “Benchmarking in rehabilitation: comparing physiotherapy services”, British Journal of Clinical Governance, Vol. 5 Iss: 2, pp. 86 - 92.

This report presents outcome data from 3,176 consecutive prospective patients referred to physiotherapy for the treatment of soft tissue injuries. The results detailed here are part of a larger study collecting data from different NHS trusts in a benchmarking study. The Therapy Outcome Measure was used to collect data on each patient in four domains: Impairment, Disability/activity, Handicap/participation, and Distress/wellbeing on the entry and the exit from physiotherapy. The study concludes that patients do not have equal opportunity of accessing therapy for their specific condition according to their abilities and needs. Therapy provided in the Trusts did not produce similar changes in the patients’ abilities and some dimensions appeared to improve more significantly in some locations. Furthermore this study would suggest that there are no common criteria for discharge of patients with similar conditions from physiotherapy across the Trusts as measured by the Therapy Outcome Measure.

Respite care or ‘short breaks’ are currently heavily promoted as services to support older people and their carers. However, uptake of such services can be limited and there is a need to design models which are more flexible and responsive, and also reflect the ethos of personcentred care, which is currently one of the main drivers of health and social care policy in the UK. This paper describes the rationale for, and the philosophy behind, a new service for people with dementia and their carers recently established in Sheffield which provides respite care in the person's own home. The importance of user and carer involvement is highlighted and the need for new approaches to evaluation stressed.

This paper discusses the opinions of people who use communication aids regarding the development of a voice input voice output communication aid (VIVOCA) using speech recognition technology. It uniquely combines the views of users of communication aids with those of speech and language therapists. Semi structured questionnaires were completed by 12 users of communication aids and 34 speech and language therapists discussed the concept of a VIVOCA in three focus groups. A thematic analysis of the information was carried out. Input, output and hardware requirements are discussed leading to specifications that therapists and users perceive would be required for a VIVOCA.

Managing operational change using a whole‐systems approach will be the key to re‐engineering services, including intermediate care and rehabilitation for older people. This article outlines an approach used in Sheffield which is based on eight categories of need.

Health and social care services should demonstrate the quality of their interventions for commissioners, patients and carers, plus it is a requirement for occupational therapists to measure and record outcomes. Use of the “Therapy Outcome Measure” (TOMs) standardised tool was implemented by an occupational therapy adult social care service to demonstrate outcomes from April 2020, following integration to a community NHS Trust.

The aim was to demonstrate occupational therapy outcomes in adult social care through a local audit of the TOMs. The objective was to determine if clients improved following occupational therapy intervention in the four domains of impairment, activity, participation and wellbeing/carer wellbeing. 70 cases were purposively sampled over a 2-month timeframe, extracting data from the local electronic recording system.

Occupational therapy in adult social care clearly makes an impact with their client group and carers. Evidence from the dataset demonstrates clinically significant change, as 93% of clients seen by adult social care occupational therapy staff showed an improvement in at least one TOMs domain during their whole episode of care. 79% of activity scores, 20% of participation scores and 50% of wellbeing scores improved following intervention. 79% of carer wellbeing scores improved following occupational therapy.

The audit did not collect data on uptake from the separate teams (equipment, housing, STAR and adult social care work) in occupational therapy adult social care. Potential sampling bias occurred as cases with completed scores only were purposively sampled. Sampling was not random which prevented data gathering on uptake of TOMs across the separate teams. Additionally, the audit results can only be applied to the setting from which the data was collected, so has limited external validity.

These novel findings illustrate the valuable and unique impact of occupational therapy in this adult social care setting. The integration of adult social care into an NHS Community Trust has supported the service to measure outcomes, by utilising the same standardised tool in use by allied health professions across the Trust.