ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the currently diminishing role and ‘power base’ of the profession in the context of sea-changes taking place in the politics, structure, organisation, regulation and management of the National Health Service (NHS) and the effect of this on Allied Health Professions (AHP) and NHS management, today. The title ‘health profession’ embraces many of the occupational groups in healthcare provision; the AHPs are one such grouping. The growth of profession-alisation and occupational development has had an important influence on the way in which AHP services have been managed in the NHS. A developmental sequence of professionalisation was proposed by Wilensky in which the first step was to start doing full-time the thing that needed doing, setting up a new area of practice recruited from other occupational groups. The roles of the AHPs and the provision of service were, for many years, extensively shaped by control over their practice by the medical profession.
