EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues Agenda For Change Agenda for change. Status report on Profiles

I now have have the latest status reports on Profiles from Amicus.
These contain MTO bandings.
If anyone would like a copy email me and will send you the file.
Tony Harrison.

ardjharrison@dsl.pipex.com

Hi Tony,
Is this something I could publish on this forum?
Or, perhaps make available as a download?

Tony has sent me the file and it's in the downloads section.

Click on this link to download in zipped MS-Word format.

Looking at this list,there appear to be MTO MPT and MET; I thought MTO was the standard?
This makes depressing reading as far as I can see.

As some one who actually had a hand in writing Medical Engineering profiles could I offer the following:
1] The traditional concept of MTO as we have all understood it is now a thing of the past - the term MTO can be applied to a vast number of NHS jobs fitting within the Healthcare Science sector as we do. It was therefore agreed that job titles should be reflective of job content and job intent I know that is broad brush but we had to start from somewhere. To include the term "Engineer" within the job title was not possible within the existing accepted professional understanding of that word - this boils down to accademic quals and professional matters like that. Hence the term Medical Engineering Technician is again a broad brush but the best possible we could do.
2] Please remember that these profiles are still technically in draft format, as they have not yet been formally finally published, however I can inform you that they have been signed off by the JEWP for early implementers to try.
3] If you look carefully at these profiles you will see that they fall into two groups MPT profiles for those of us involved in the equipment design and development area broadly speaking and Medical Engineering for those of us broadly in the more practical hands on equipment support role.
4] For those of us with a foot in both camps well time and feedback from EI sites will tell.
5] Next as to the ME profiles there are 4 in total ranging from entry to profiles for those of us "managing" a service section. Do not think that the role L419RR Section Manger means the indivdual in overall charge of the service because it don't. Posts of that nature are covered by the professional manager profiles or the relevent senior EO profiles or the relevent Clinical Scientist Profile. This profile in this format refers to a post heading up Mechanical services say in an "EBME" service which has Electronic, Anesthetic and Mechanical and other services for example.
6] The state of play with all of these profiles is that we now (as has been the case for all other profiles published to date) have to see if they work in practice this is the purpose of EI sites so that the information can be gathered to ensure that when the time comes to finally vote (and remeber voting to date has only been to try the process out) you have sufficent info for you to make a clear and informed choice.
7] We here have been waiting for the formal publication of these profiles so that we can commence the process of trying to match the indivdual existing posts to these profiles and via the work done by local matching pannels determine if anything has been for the want of a better word missed out of the profile.
8] I am quite happy to explain any rationale in these profiles to anyone just contact me.
9] As our matching commences I am happy to provide feedback about the process and once matching (again if possible) has been completed and confirmed to provide feedback on the position posts within this service in relation to the new afc placings v the old mTO3, 4 etc gradings.

I hope all find this information useful.

May I suggest that as this subject is likely to be the hot topic in the next few months that ALL info re this subject be collated into one area on the site so we can all see all comments on this area both past and present.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

This will allow "financial-decoupling" of R&D from maintenance and physiological measurements based technical disciplines I think. This enables management to pitch salaries or assess job roles in terms of how much each discipline is valued without having the situation that exists now where all technicians on a band get similar remuneration. Sort the roles into descending order of necessity and I think we all begin to realise what could be in store for us.

Does any one know if AFC is set up to account for job responsibilty based on the size of a medical engineering department, ether by employees or the amount of capital assets covered? My problem is as a radiotherapy engineer I have a small section but the cost and complexity of assets has to be taken into account somewhere.

Nice to see Paul back with us again. Obviously time is of essence.

alex

In response to Kerry can I offer the following.
1] The short answer is yes.
2] This is reflected in the following factors
1-communication
2-knowledge, training & experiance
3-Analytical & judemental skills
8-responsibility for financial & physical resources
9-responsibility for human resources.

Howver having said that it is my experiance that true NHS employed Radiology engineers who I agree do a vital and essential job are not that common, for example in my time in the NHS some 20 years I have only met 4 or 5 top wack. So I think it is fair to say that there are not that many. In producing these profiles we have had to consider the "clinical engineering" (I use those words carefully but they are the best discriptor I could think of) staff as a whole. I accept that there may be clinical engineering roles which do not fit easily into any of the proposed profiles and the only solution for these I can see at the moment will be a full job evaluation exercise.

Hope this helps.

For information
Agreed Job Profiles for Medical Engineers now published on Agenda for Change Website, February 2004 update in pdf format.
www.doh.gov.uk/agendaforchange/