An interactive wall has been unveiled at the Royal Derby Hospital that patients, visitors and potential entrants into the professions can scan with their phones to find out more about some of UHDB’s “unsung heroes”.

The ‘Wall of Fame’ is the first of its kind in the NHS and can be used to provide extra information about the different Allied Health Professionals (AHP) and Healthcare Scientists (HCS) working across our hospitals. It is also part of the build up for the launch of UHDBs new AHP and HCS 5 year strategy and links to the upcoming National ‘AHP Day’, both due next month in October to continue to raise the profile and impact of AHPs.

Around 1,400 UHDB team members currently care for patients in a variety of different AHP and HCS roles across the Trust, with the fantastic work of these colleagues going slightly under the radar and many patients and future recruits being unaware of what they do.

The state-of-the-art interactive board, which is 18ft wide, will help raise awareness of these roles however, with hospital visitors able to scan a QR code next to a picture of an AHP or HCS colleague to be redirected to a webpage with more information about their profession, to help recruit more people into the roles.

UHDB is the first Trust in the UK to create such a display, with Natalie Matchett, AHP Practice Learning Facilitator, coming up with the idea after spotting something similar online at a hospital in Singapore.

Natalie, who is an Occupational Therapist, said: “This project has been about 12 months in the making, so it’s very surreal to see this idea now come to fruition and become a reality! Some of the AHP and HCS roles may be slightly unknown to a lot of people, so it’s fantastic that we now have a facility to give all of our patients and visitors access to more information about what we do. We’re very proud of all of our dedicated AHPs and HCS colleagues and are delighted that this display will give a voice to these unsung heroes and be a lasting legacy and tribute for our AHPs and HCS at UHDB”

Scanning one of the QR codes on the wall will direct you to a webpage detailing a typical day in the life of someone in that role, what patients and relatives might see whilst being treated by that member of staff and the different career paths someone would have to take in order to join the profession.

Improvements are already being planned to make the existing display more digitally attractive with an augmented reality app, so that when someone hovers their phone over the pictures, a video of an AHP or HCS will start playing where they will provide more information about their role.

Penny Owens, Director of AHPs at UHDB, said: “AHPs and HCS staff are no longer the minority but are in fact now the second largest workforce in the NHS, behind nurses, so it’s really important that we are able to put these professions on the map. We hope that the accessibility of the display and the digital element will allow us to raise awareness of these roles and also appeal to the next generation of students to consider a career working as an AHP or HCS.”

The Wall of Fame provides information on the unique talents of the Trust’s Occupational Therapists, Therapeutic Radiographers, Speech and Language Therapists, Orthoptists, Operating Department Practitioners, Dieticians, Healthcare Scientists, Prosthetists, Orthotists, Diagnostic Radiographers and Physiotherapists.

Prosthetist Gordon Wilson said: “I’m very proud to be representing one of our AHP professions as part of the new interactive display. A lot of people think of doctors and nurses when they think about the NHS but there are lots of different roles that the public may not know too much about, so I think it’s fantastic and very important that we raise awareness about the work of these colleagues.”

There are also plans to create more portable versions of the display, so that it can be taken to educate the public on the 11 different AHP and HCS professions at UHDB across each of our five hospitals, as well as at schools and other hospitals across Derbyshire.

Susan Spray, Programme Lead at Joined Up Careers Derbyshire, said: “We were so excited to learn about the Wall of Fame, which we believe will modernise and transform the way in which we engage with young people considering their career options and provides an innovative way to demonstrate the attractive proposition on offer from the NHS.”

The Royal Derby Hospital Wall of Fame can be found close to the main entrance, along the central corridor.

To scan the code on your phone, open your camera, hover over the code and select the drop down hyperlink that appears at the top of your phone screen. Should this fail, you can also download any QR Code Reader app from the app store.