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Table 1 Description of the included papers

From: Using staffing ratios for workforce planning: evidence on nine allied health professions

Reference

Quality score*

Study Type

Country

Setting

Brief Description

AH Rehab CC (2007)[21]

1

Focus group

Australia

Rehabilitation

Consensus statement on required numbers of allied health to staff rehabilitation facilities treating various categories of patients

Aust. Fac. Rehab. Med. (2005) [22]

2

Non-systematic synthesis

Australia

Rehabilitation

Discussion paper estimating staffing numbers required for rehabilitation facilities

Br Diabetic Assn (1999) [29]

1

Position statement

Britain

Diabetes services

Provides recommendations for core staffing levels required for specialist diabetes services.

Burton et al (2005) [33]

2

Audit

Australia

Rehabilitation

Audit of psychologist numbers in ten hospitals in the rehabilitation sector of Victoria. All services reported under-staffing.

Christie (2006) [30]

2

Audit/benchmark

Canada

Acute hospital

Identification of physiotherapy and occupational therapy FTEs per bed over time in medical and surgical wards.

Gill (2007) [28]

2

Model

Australia

Chronic kidney disease

Model for provision of community based services for patients with chronic kidney disease via extended scope roles for dieticians and nurses.

Henley et al (2006) [25]

2

Non-systematic synthesis

Australia and New Zealand

Emergency department

Provides guidelines to the function and operations of acute MAPUs attached to hospital emergency departments.

McMillan & Ledder (2001) [23]

4

Audit

Britain

Neuro-rehabilitation

Survey of staffing in adult neuro-rehabilitation teams in south-east England. High incidence of staff stress due to the case-loads. Little is offered for those with psycho-social disability for example few teams contain neuro-psychologists.

Meyer et al (2002) [32]

6

Audit

Australia

All

University of Wollongong study of the dietetic workforce of New South Wales from 1984 to 2000.

Mudge, et al (2006) [24]

4

Controlled trial

Australia

Acute hospital

Controlled trial in an acute general setting of the effect of increased levels of multidisciplinary intervention. 1538 medical in-patients were assigned either to routine care or to care with three times the amount of allied health professional time. Resulted in significantly reduced in-hospital mortality and functional decline and improvement in patients' ratings of their health status

PA Hospital (2004) [26]

2

Pre-post study

Australia

Emergency department

In house survey of a trial of the use of AHPs (OTs, PTs and STs) in the Emergency Dept of a tertiary hospital for a period of 4 months over winter. Project made considerable cost savings for the hospital by avoiding in-patient admission for 117 patients over the period of the trial.

Ridoutt et al (2006) [15]

3

Literature review and focus group analysis

Australia

All

Aimed to identify current methods of quantifying AHP workload capacity and to profile the AHP workforce requirements. Recommended the use of a procedures based workload measurement tool. This tool would be useful in settings with set or routine treatments e.g. rehabilitation, community settings.

  1. * CriSTAL Appraisal Score Section B (score out of 7)
  2. AHP = allied health professional; FTE = full time equivalent; MAPU = medical assessment and planning unit; OT = occupational therapist; PT = physiotherapist; SP = speech pathologist.