Helping physios return to work and join our workforce

There is such talent within our physiotherapy workforce and on the outside ‘looking in’, we have an increasingly healthy supply of physiotherapists coming into the system, however we also have increasing demand for our services and vacancies within some of our experienced roles. To meet this demand and to deliver sustainable and effective person-centred care we also need to ensure a diversity of workforce that understands the population it works with.

So much of our work within NHS Health Education England and across your organisations, is realising the talent of the many potential colleagues ‘looking in’.

Over the past three years, our return to practice work has returned 143 physios, now bringing our service an average of nine years of experience per returner to the system. The team are now expanding this support to our UK based international recruits and refugee colleagues to achieve HCPC registration.

We are developing the programme of support, working with AHP/CSP networks, the HCPC and international and refugee colleagues with lived experience, to help us to optimally support and value our colleagues to enable them to realise their potential within health and care services.

There are fabulous examples across physiotherapy of driving up the value of our whole workforce, developing the talents of our people, and supporting physiotherapy services to be increasingly representative of the populations we serve. We are hearing about significant numbers of trained physiotherapy practitioners from within our support worker staffing groups or within our communities, looking for opportunities to gain registration or professional employment.

The path into, or returning to practice, can be complex particularly for those of our internationally trained or refugee colleagues. Please reach out positively to these trained colleagues to either support into practice, or if not immediately possible, to continue strongly within support roles. Please access our web pages here for support.