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

There's a warm feeling alright - working it's way down the back of my neck - warm and smelly.

Guys,

I for one am looking intently at the criteria for specialist medical technician compared to medical technician. I intend to put a case forward for band 6 on the elements I do. If it is finally deemed I am only worthy of employing at the level of medical engineering technician. It will be those skills that I will use as those are the skills my employer is willing to pay for.

On a similar note. All (most) other posts that have been evaluated keep the same job title. We have been evaluated - or have we? I am an MTO, not an MET or SMET! There, to my knowledge have not been any comparisons to job spec, the only basis is on current wage and the pay banding of the new grade.

I don't think my colleagues on MTO3 grades and I will be in the enviable position to put forward any "case" - my understanding of AfC is that my current employer will be able to modify my job-role, decide what's to be included in my new job description, then consider what they want to pay me when they've fiddled about.

Col,

True, we might be MTO's but what does that actually mean. Its an all encompassing title. As for the change to MET, SMET or whatever, see the posting by Paul Robbins (04/02/04).

The Amicus profile listing still shows MTO's but on low grades. It also shows MPT and MET's, as does the DoH AfC profiles. Amicus also seem to suggest that many jobs will map across to the MET grades - even some of the specialists (eg Renal).

Never regarded myself as an MTO. Always considered myself as a Medical Physics Technician. MTO was too loose a job title. Glad to see some others enjoying their work Papajo I'll have a pint of what you're on.

Well Guys as I,ve said in this forum before
" Any Fool can spend Someone elses Money "
Its Dead easy and what an excellent way to waste the Taxpayers Hard Earned Cash.
I wonder how long it will be before we need another Change !!! 6 months???
Still it keeps old Jobsworth going I suppose, its got to be better than working for a living.
Maybe all those Nasty Profit Making Commercial Companies should get into all this Beurocracy
then maybe they won,t be so despised
Tongues Stuck

There comes a point when the employer is paying less than the market-value for an employee - that's a bit dangerous if all the employer is relying on is some temporary stop-gap measure to keep employees, such as the R&R premium, with the intention of cutting salaries later-on. Dangerous if you don't prevent bits of the system, such as EBME, from collapsing beforehand. There may be something in the idea of AfC, NOS and KSF for the good of the NHS organisation but at the trust-level, for those balancing the books, I reckon that compromises will have to be made - resulting in the likelhood of penny-pinching.

I wouldn't be surprised if some people involved directly with AfC, in the trust where I work, will think that within 6 years (the period our Trust has notified us that R&R will apply for) is enough for trainees that fit the bill to come in and replace staff lost by "natural wastage" inclined to leave because they can't afford to eat, buy a house and afford to run a car to get into work post AfC, post R&R. Any MTO3 with a few years experience who is transferred to Band 5, with or without R&R, will be more inclined to move into the private sector for a pay rise working for the more reputable private companies who will also have different requirements for academic qualifications and experience (some would say lower generally - I can give a few examples) to do a similar type of job.

Unfortunately for many it will have to be the private sector because in the NHS after AfC it seems that only graduates with lots of experience and skills will be in a position to move into the higher bands or between jobs. That leaves the majority of current MTOs/MPTs/METs, whatever, out on a limb, possibly stuck in a job where they're being further undervalued than they are already. I know I'm being particularly more cynical than usual but I have 17 years of being pushed from pillar to post relying on the fact that although the pay wasn't brilliant there was some security and certainty in aspects of the job that many NHS employees felt were a reasonable exchange for taking all the crap.

Quite agree with you RL.up in Glasgow we had a training scheme where you had 6 X 4 monthly placements as a trainee then 2 X 1 year placements as MTO 1 then you were able to apply for MTO 2 jobs. Then they decided to start a degree course with a local uni. Result is we now have people with degrees being fasttracked through the system dispite not knowing which end of a screwdriver is which. AFC is just another excuse to keep us non degree techs down.

I did two years, full time, regional training for Medical Physics Technicians. Came in as a student, got my qualifications, stuck with it through the MPT structure and then onto MTO grades. Sometimes watched others walk into the job at my level with less qualifications, effort, skills and experience. Still seeing this years later.

Actually I'm electronic engineering Degree qualified and hoping to complete some Biomedical Engineering postgraduate stuff soon, both done off my own back, with support from day-release from my employer (which I'm grateful for). So I think I can see both sides of the qualifications/experience argument that you're getting at. We need both.

I'd really like to stick with this job since I do enjoy it despite moaning all the time but it's the lack of a speciality (despite having worked on ventilators, some anaesthetics training/experience, clinical support, etc) and supervisory experience i.e. experience has not been recognised and isn't down in my my job description that has done for me I think. I will have to try to put my skills and academic qualifications into good use and "fastrack" myself into a Band 6 or Band 7 job as soon as AfC strikes but I feel like doing a flit to the highest private company "bidder".

If "they" hadn't done any job evaluations or written any profiles or studied any job descriptions (because we hadn't re-written them for AfC) then how the hell did "they" know last year that we would qualify for a Recruitment & Retention payment ? Surely it can't be because we're all simply going to be "slotted in" to the new pay scales and the job evaluations etc are all just a smoke screen so "they" can introduce new terms and conditions ? ?

Surely not