Welcome to the first edition of Allied Health Insights for 2023, the Year of the Rabbit: let’s be earnest in what we do, and treat others the way we would like to be treated. High up on everyone’s list for this year should be self-care and striving for work-life balance. 

• Paramedic Bianca Jackson tells us how she was able to stay positive on the frontlines of the COVID pandemic, and the support structures that she and her colleagues found most useful. 
• On the self-care front, we have some tips for time-poor AHPs. During the years of the COVID pandemic, one thing that so many allied health professionals didn’t have time to contemplate was self-care. Self-care is central to maintaining physical and mental well-being, and it is especially important for AHPs with demanding schedules and caseloads at capacity. We have five freely available, simple tips for those of us who are time-poor and habitually invested in caring for others before ourselves. 
• For our A to Z of Allied Health, we’re putting in an emergency call to the paramedic profession. Paramedics have successfully reinvented themselves from “stretcher bearers to practitioners” in a relatively short space of time. Increasingly, access to cutting-edge technology means that paramedics undertake sophisticated remote diagnostic testing and deliver life-saving interventions in patients’ homes and the community. During COVID-19, paramedics, in partnership with multidisciplinary allied health teams, successfully triaged patients to prevent avoidable hospital admissions, and they continue to play a critical role in front-line decision making and triage that can determine the outcomes for the patient and the healthcare system.

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Allied Health Insights is a fortnightly newsletter published by AHP Workforce, a wholly owned subsidiary of HealthWork International, offering thought-provoking and incisive commentary on issues that affect the allied health professional space.