Paul, my burning issue with AfC is whether I am to be compromised (yet again) by a system that has a tendency to destroy any good-will that exists with it's staff and demoralises them by allowing possibly non-representative groups of volunteers to steer badly thought-through processes and schemes, on the fly, for whatever reasons I can only imagine. You mention the status and equivalence of Clinical Engineers, Works Officers and Technologists and in particular the CEng qualification......??
Well we all have to have aspirations but mine are set a little lower – will I take a reduction in salary and have negligible future prospects after all this? I hope not. If CEng and equivalent status that is what drives you through the AfC process then fair-enough but the majority of us in EBME are monitor menders. Of course I am suggesting that you may be out of touch with the masses. A just and fair pay scheme for individuals in our position is going to be very difficult to achieve for at least three reasons:
1. There is a high demand for technical staff and it's difficult to recruit and retain them - this has already been recognised; that's why there is the inclusion of a temporary (albeit 7 years), discretionary, recruitment and retention premium applied as and when seen fit by the local assessment panel. This means that in areas where there is a skills shortage, that technicians doing the same job (or at least have the same job profile) as their colleagues working in areas with less demand, that they may be paid more for being on the same grade i.e. be paid the R&R premium. Fair? More like a skills-postcode-lottery to me.
2. The fact that there will be local assessment of the similar job profiles will mean that its likely there will be discrepancies between the grades that some individuals achieve at one location to what an individual achieves at another. It is just a fact of life that rules (whether they be the law of the jungle i.e. evolution or not) will be interpreted and applied differently by different groups of assessors - perhaps under the influence of local pressures e.g. financial position of the Trust. Despite all the training and software packages under the Sun.
3. With all the good will in the world, some Technologists may lose out because they work in small departments providing limited services. The job-roles will be assessed commensurate with the level of the limited EBME services that exist in some hospitals and may ensure that the associated grading puts Technicians onto a lower-salaried band than they were on before. The catch may be that the services at that location will never be improved so there will never be the opportunity to progress. Not until there is a mass-exodus will R&R premia be applied, I reckon. No one just hands-out premiums for no reason - I think even R&R premium will be assessed locally - by that time the experienced staff may have already gone, to the higher paid jobs, if possible.
Just my spin on it all you understand, not Chinese Whispers or anything like that. My burning issues, if you like.
Before AfC or NOS there may also be a tendency that staff currently performing certain duties, tasks or responsibilities will be relieved of these if there is the possibility of others, in the position to do so, to claim these in order to boost their own status in the scheme. e.g. training roles, relieving other staff of tasks and responsibilities such as quality systems, etc, etc. Hence by striving to remove the inequality between professions AfC may well enhance inequalities and infighting within the same profession. This may really be the Evolution you suggest (survival of the fittest).
As for being a vast set of tests to perform – surely the group of experts involved in AfC are not trying to apply the system to job-roles that they know nothing about are they? If you are working within Clinical Engineering or equipment maintenance surely you have been involved, with your peers, in your chosen field and not “dabbling” with other job-roles? This seems inefficient to me if that's the case but I'm really only interested in the progress towards the job-profiles of Clinical Technologists because I'm an Engineering Technician, not a Clinical Biochemist or a Respiratory Measurements Technologist. The wider picture is irrelevant to a monitor-mender like I am and a luxury since my time is not my own during working hours.
As I see it the problem that the NHS has is that it's never been clear what kind of a service is required from Clinical Engineering and how this is to be achieved i.e. no thought-out plan (looks like this is set to continue judging from your posts). So how can job-roles be assessed in the “wider picture” if they vary so much from location to location? No consistency or standardisation in job roles so how will you maintain consistency and standardisation in the AfC and NOS? Perhaps NOS should have been introduced before AfC, once the NHS management had decided what it wanted from it's employees – after deciding what sort of services it wanted to provide, of course. Oh and telling us about it and avoiding leaving "filling in the gaps" to groups of volunteers, perhaps, Oops, I am being controversial again.
