If you don't register now you may regret it; registering now is easy and cheap, after the voluntary register closes registration will be much harder.
Consider this - by the time Clinical Technologists are State Registered you will be employed as a Clinical Technologist - MTO titles will have gone - and if you are not registered you will not be allowed to be employed in your (by then) current post.
It has been said that the only reason the state wishes to register people is so that they can be struck off, if you do not register, or fail to keep up your registration, you could be said to have struck yourself off.
So what happens to people who strike themselves off? Well they get a choice - they can go home on no pay, or they can do most of there job but get paid less, e.g. a theatre sister at a local hospital (who know personally, this is not apocryphal) failed to renew her SR a few years ago was offered temporary employment as an auxiliary - I seem to remember she stayed home for a month or so - I'll ask her.
Will we ever be state registered? Med Phys Techs (i.e. the patient contact guys) will certainly be, but "engineers" (even those currently calling theselves Med Phys Techs) only maybe. As I understand it the HPC is insisting that there must be at least one university offering an approved degree in "Clinical Engineering" by the time of registration and if there isn't it cannot go ahead (they can hardly insist on future registrants having a degree when there isn't one!).
Another thing that wil stop SR for biomeds is an objection from somewhere, and guess what, there has been an objection (more than one?) from Estates type BME people. Basically these guys say we don't need a degree, not required, not paying for them to go to college, can't be bothered, etc (such people have also been heard to say that people with degrees are pillocks and don't know one of a screwdriver for the other, and so on). Of course people are entitled to an opinion just as I am entitled to an opinion of their opinion.
I say this, maybe a degree is not the be all and end all, but people in professions which require a degree will eventually get more than those in jobs which don't.
To make it easy I will put this in the form of a multiple choice question
Who decides what we get paid? is it
(a) the inverse interlectuals who decry the need for a degree
(b) the HPC and the like who don't
(clue - the correct answer is not (a))
If we wish to be viewed as professional we must wear the professional's clothes, adopt the professionals' attitudes and aspirations (or walk the walk and talk the talk).
The recent Amicus information showed that Phys Med Techs are likely to do better than us under A4C. Did they achieve this by talking down the interlectual rigour of their jobs? "Oh, sticking these electrodes on is about the same as working the tills in Asda" or was it "Oh yes Doctor my DEGREE in physiological measurement adequately prepared me to understand and undertake the vital and highly skilled task of ......."?
So radiographers and nurses have degrees and radiography aides and auxiliaries don't, which do you want to be? Which gets paid more? Do you want to be electricians and wear your (metaphorical) boiler suits or you want to be technologists and wear your white coats (and your degrees) with pride.
You should bear in mind that most of us now in post won't actually need to distress ourselves with the tedious business of proving that, when it comes down to it, we do know what we are talking about. In case you wonder, I think the sharp end goes onto the screw...
