Allied Health Professions
There are so many great reasons to come and work for us, and on this page, you will find out more about some of the individual Allied Health Professions across NHS Dumfries & Galloway. Each division within our Health Board has a dedicated Manager which allows for excellent lines of communication for our different teams.
Our Allied Health Professional colleagues work in a variety of environments across the Health Board. We have a range of staff based in acute, rehabilitation, short term reablement, mental health, paediatric and community settings. You can find out more information on each professional area below, and because our teams are truly multi-disciplinary, you will also find details of how these roles integrate into specialist areas by visiting the other Divisions pages on this website.
Why work for NHS Dumfries & Galloway?
- Smaller teams providing a real sense of community within the workplace
- Positive culture throughout the organisation
- Visible and approachable senior managers
- Free parking across all of our sites
- Regular social events in and out of work hours
- State of the art facilities including clinical training spaces and simulation suite
Please select from the specialties below for more information
Dietetics
Our Dietitians work across the region in the following areas:
- Adult acute (inpatients) – Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary and Galloway Community Hospital
- Adult Community Hospital Inpatients
- Community Nutrition Support – outpatient clinics across the region and home visits
- Paediatrics (inpatients & outpatients)
- Diabetes & Weight management
- Mental Health and Eating disorders – To find out more about our mental health service click here.
- Gastroenterology
- Renal
- Inpatient Catering
Occupational Therapy
Occupational Therapists work within hospitals and domiciliary (home/homely) settings across 3 newly evolving pathways of Acute, Rehabilitation and Reablement and Musculoskeletal/Outpatients. Working alongside people and their occupational needs to help regain, maintain and accommodate new ways of managing tasks and participating in occupations (activities) important or essential towards healthy ageing and positive well-being.
The Acute service aims to provide high quality, responsive and holistic functional assessment and treatment for patients in order to facilitate safe and timely discharges.
The Rehabilitation service work within community hospital inpatient and in domiciliary settings to holistically work alongside people effected by physical conditions to help regain, maintain and learn new ways of managing tasks and activities important or essential towards everyday life.
The MSK service work within outpatient hand therapy clinic settings and provide patient centred Hand therapy programmes such as custom made thermoplastic splints/orthotics, joint protection programmes, functional rehab programmes, exercise strengthening and sensory work, ergonomic and work related advice.
Our Occupational Therapy Service is available to adults within Acute Services (Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary ) and across the region in Cottage Hospitals, Community Rehabilitation and Short-term Reablement. We also provide a Children’s OT service.
To find out more about our mental health service click here.
You can find more about our service by clicking here.
Key Features
- Opportunity for Advanced skills progression at all levels
- Shared Culture of improvement and self development
- Recent management and pathway restructures within AHP services with improved professional representation and support available to staff
- Support and Development of local Assistant Practitioner roles
- Well-established professional development systems and support networks with colleagues such as the Regional Occupational Therapy Assistant Network (ROTA)
- Active inclusion in collaborative transformational improvements across the integrated health and social care partnership, such as use of Wearable Technology to enhance therapeutic outcomes, coproduction in Home Teams and supporting the Scottish Ambulance Falls Pathway
- Active participation and contribution towards national research and development of pathways
Why work with us...
- Varied hospital and community bases to suit individual styles of working
- Brand new Hospital facilities at the New DGRI
- Availability of technology to allow for agile working and networking across all settings
- Excellent multidisciplinary team relations to support patient outcomes
- Beautiful rural area with additional easy access to urban areas and amenities
- One big OT family working across the region, sharing knowledge and improving the services provided for the people of D&G
Hear from the team...
“The people of D&G are so great to work with and I feel like I can really make a difference in the area I love, alongside very knowledgeable and dedicated colleagues” Occupational Therapist, Community Rehabilitation
Physiotherapy
our team is made up of around 70 Physiotherapists. We cover a wide geographical area working across acute, community and musculoskeletal, therefore have wide breadth of knowledge of local services and specialist groups. As a service we assess, diagnose and treat conditions relating to human function and play a key role in enabling people to improve their health and wellbeing.
Our Physiotherapists work across the region in the following areas/specialities:
- Amputees
- Cardiac rehabilitation
- Care of the elderly
- Community physiotherapy
- Children’s Physio
- Learning disabilities
- Medical
- Musculoskeletal
- Paediatric physiotherapy
- Pulmonary rehabilitation
- Orthopaedic
- Rehabilitation
- Surgical
- Women’s health
- Mental health – To find out more about our mental health service click here.
You can find out more about our Physiotherapy service by clicking here
Why work with us...
- Our department is extremely friendly, relaxed, approachable, and keen to develop peers skills and the services we provide with regular in-service training, CPD opportunities, regular supervision and development of skills
- Rotational experience at both band 5 and band 6 level, static posts, specialist areas including Women’s Health, Rheumatology, Falls, Pain Services, Mental Health, Learning Disabilities, Paediatrics, Pulmonary Rehabilitation, Cardiac rehabilitation Advanced Practitioners, and First Contact Practitioners
- Strong links of communication between Physiotherapists working in specialist areas to achieve best patient outcomes, linking with multi-disciplinary teams including OT, Orthotics, Dietetics, Medical and Nursing colleagues
- We are committed to a caring and collaborative culture, applying our CORE values: Compassion, Openness, Respect and Excellence: https://www.nhsdg.co.uk/our-values/
- Providing development for all our current and future staff at all levels, providing on-call training and weekend working, a wide variety of student placements, and progression for our support workers who are highly valuable members of our team
- We have a state of the art new hospital, providing single room facilities including Therapy gyms, a lecture theatre, a library and supported progression for new graduates
Hear from the team...
“The region has beautiful and affordable house prices, located near fantastic schools which perform consistently in national ranks, making this the perfect place to raise a family”
Podiatry
Our team has clinics throughout the region from Langholm to Stranraer, a distance of over 105 miles! We work as part of smaller teams based at different locations across the region. Services are provided in a range of environments from out patient clinics to home visits and cottage hospitals/acute settings to residential care homes.
Services provided:
- High Risk Wound Care
- Musculoskeletal Assessments and Insole Manufacture
- General Podiatry
- Nail Surgery
You can find more about our Podiatry service by clicking here
Why work here...
- Scenic and rich cultural place to work and stay. Home visits are always an adventure!
- Utilisation of current technology from portable electronic records system to video consultations with patients.
- Close working relationships with Community Nursing teams
- Collaborative working with other Musculoskeletal Allied Health Professionals
- Weekly consultant led Diabetic Joint Foot Clinics with a multi-disciplinary input
- Strong new graduate support group and mentorship to help personal development
- Small, close knit teams with biannual region wide learning days
- Encouragement and support to expand individual learning and undertake CPD
- Support to complete additional courses such as steroid injections/non medical prescribing
- Opportunities to influence service development and re-design
Hear from the team...
“I love being part of the Podiatry team! As a new graduate I have been well supported and given numerous learning opportunities. We have a close knit team which provides a good support network. No two days are the ever the same and every day you learn something new!”
“Our teams are supportive and will assist you in your growth as a practitioner. Everyone is friendly and encouraging and there is lots of opportunities”
Radiography
The Radiography team provides a 24/7 emergency service from 2 sites DGRI and GCH. As a service we play a pivotal role in diagnosis and ongoing treatment monitoring for both In/out patients.
Our Radiographers have opportunity to work across the region in the following areas/specialties:
- Mammography
- Ultrasound
- MRI
- MSK reporting
- Intervention
- CT Coronary Angiography
- Obstetrics Ultrasound
- Dental
- General
- CT
- DEXA
- Vascular intervention
- Pacemaker insertion
Speech and Language Therapy
Our Speech and Language team provide services throughout Dumfries and Galloway to people across all age groups working with with babies, children, teenagers, adults, families and carers.
Services offered are :
- Assessment
- Advice
- Individual or group therapy
- Training
- Assessment and access to communication equipment and resources
Adult Speech and Language
The speech and language therapy service for adults covers the whole beautiful region of Dumfries and Galloway with two acute bases: Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary and Galloway Community Hospital.
Although we cover a wide geographical area, specialist teams tend to be small and this is great for collaborative working and getting to know your colleagues in AHP, nursing and medical teams.
Variety is the spice of life and here we have it in abundance. Over the course of the week you can be travelling in the countryside between destinations, working within our modern new hospital or breaking for lunch in your own garden. As DGRI is a district general hospital we meet people experiencing difficulties due to a vast range of medical conditions and this really does mean no two days are the same.
We are able to offer our service in the acute settings, in community hospitals, out-patients, home visits including care homes and from our own homes using Attend Anywhere for virtual consultations.
Mental Health Speech and Language Service
To find out more about our mental health service click here.
Why work here...
- We are a small, friendly supportive team with regular individual and team meetings.
- As we work as one team across the region in primary and secondary care we oversee the whole patient journey and focus on someone seeing the right person at the right time
- Self development is encouraged: SLTs and SLTSWs get involved in secondments and national projects.
- Shared offices, patients and social contacts with AHP colleagues
- Friendly and approachable colleagues in the wider MDTs and specialist services ; stroke, respiratory, neurology, Care of the Elderly, rehabilitation, H&N cancer, ENT, Mental Health and dementia, intellectual disability to name a few.
- Joint working in the ENT voice clinic and at Head & Neck cancer clinics
- Weekly videofluoroscopy clinic for swallowing assessments
- Laryngectomy clinics for changing voice prosthesis
- Close links with specialist dementia services through the Ideas team
- Our team is innovative and improvement driven -we set our own projects and objectives
- Technology is embraced: Attend Anywhere consultations are now the norm, we write electronic SLT notes using Morse on our ipads and therapy is regularly carried out using apps.
- Access to our local AAC loan bank
Hear from the team...
“Moving to D&G was always a short term solution for me, getting a foot on the ladder as a band 5 when hospital jobs were hard to come by. I expected I might stay for 6 months, a year tops- and head back to Glasgow. I realised quite quickly that the team that you work with has a huge impact on the enjoyment of the job. I loved the team, the work life balance, the country living. The added bonus that we were only a 2 hour drive from 3 major cities. I couldn’t believe my luck. Who you work with matters. If you come to D&G, you’ll find a beating vibrant heart”
“Since arriving on my first day you’ve been so welcoming, you’ve got a great team and it’s lovely to see how well you work together and help each other out”