Allied Health Leadership Training Impact on Employee Experience: A near-empty scoping review

Abstract

Background: Allied Health practitioners (AHPs) are crucial in improving patient outcomes, reducing mortality and morbidity, and supporting timely discharge in a hospital setting. Despite their importance in the hospital workforce, recruitment and ongoing retention of AHPs remain significant challenges. More recently, leadership development has been a key strategy in enhancing employee capability and wellbeing. While leadership programs show benefits from the leader’s perspective, little is known about the impact on employee experience.

Aim: A scoping review was undertaken to determine the impact of allied health leadership programs on employee experience in hospital settings.

Method: The Arksey and O’Malley’s(1) framework was employed to guide the search. A systematic search across Medline, CINAHL, Embase, and PsycINFO was conducted in May 2025, capturing four concepts: Allied Health, Hospitals, Leadership Training, and Employee Experience. Articles included empirical, peer-reviewed studies, and were individually assessed against the inclusion criteria, ensuring that at least one of the outcomes was the employee experience of those who were being led. Data extracted included study demographics, details of training, and measurement of employee experience.

Results: A total of 3,644 articles were identified, with initial screening reducing this to 72 articles for in-depth review. After further screening the final yield was just one article, resulting in a near-empty scoping review.

Conclusion: This review highlights the employee experience and demonstrates the substantial gap in the literature on how allied health leadership programs influence employee experience in hospital settings. Employee experience is a novel and under-researched outcome, yet crucial for a functioning hospital system and allied health retention therefore further research is required in this area.