Thanks for the reply John. The information I'm trying to get is how much responsibility an ATO can have before achieving full technician status. Our ATO's have been taken on at a low grade and do not have any career progression. They will stay on their grade until they leave or apply for a higher grade job. At the moment they are servicing a wide range of medical equipment from flowmeters, regulators, nebulisers and tympanic thermometers among others. Recently a decision was made to to include patient hoists to their list of duties. Taken individually it could be argued that with the right training an ATO may be able to carry out PPM's on a particular type of equipment, but to be able to work on all of the items will require a level of knowledge or experience expected of a qualified BME technician. Our management are getting biomeds on the cheap and may be the start of a move to regrade our jobs downwards in the future.
I went to a talk given by a Clinical Scientist about the future of medical Physics (I'll not name names at this time) and towards the end of the talk he mentioned that his "clinical technologists" had been graded band 6 under AFC but he said "you don't need a band 6 to carry out a PPM!". He was looking into ways of restructuring his depatment to reduce the number band 6s' and regrade most of them to band 5. I think that this is the way most Medcial Physics depatments are going especially as many clinical scientists are being graded at band 6.
