EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues Agenda For Change Job Descriptions

Ken & Techman,

I disagree with your comments regarding a lack of relevant courses. There are Electronics/Physics postgraduate and undergraduate courses with Biomedical Engineering/Medical Electronics options availiable and there have been for years. Many are part-time; these include accredited honours degrees and postgraduate degrees (BSc, BEng, MSc, MEng, MScMedSci, MPhys) accredited by institutions such as the IEE in the case of electronic/Electrical Engineering - not exactly lacking in credibility when you consider that a BEng(Hons) up until recently met (still meets under certain circumstances) the academic level for CEng registration. I expect these qualifications to be accepted for IPEM registration purposes for some time yet, until the new schemes kick-in. What there is a lack of is recognised Clinical Technology Degree courses that are accredited by the professional body that will "administer" CPD, training, etc, etc - in this case IPEM I presume.

I agree that there are courses available but I have been in medical electronics for 18 years and during that time I have only have had the oportunity to study part time / day release and none of these course are available locally which excludes me from taking that route.
I was recently talking to someone in pathology and was told that they were in a similar situation to us several years ago but now they have to have degree or MSc qualifications and these can be undertaken locally by the part time / day release route.
It seem to me that we are following what pathology have done but are several years behind them, no doubt we will catch up and more courses will be available and a degree will be essential.

The availability of engineering degree courses is not the main issue. They are what they are and serve their purpose. I think the main point is the content and level offered. Traditional degree courses are more theoretical and at a higher level than is required by your average tech (and that includes me), unless you're suggesting that we should all be chartered engineers.

The ONC/HNC/HND courses are more practical and therefor from my point of view more suited to our role. It is the change from this to graduate level that needs addressing, eg with clinical technology courses.

There aren't too many available (I've checked the UCAS listings) and even then, some that are listed are really science courses with little or no electronics etc (again I checked the relevant uni sites and course details). I have also only found 1 that is available on a part-time basis. Fine if you happen to live in the area, tough if you don't.

Well - I think that the only point I was making about CEng was an attempt to reflect the level of the Degree of BEng(Hons) e.g. an Engineering Degree (applied science) and not BSc (pure science). Once beyond the minimum level required the argument as to which level is appropriate is "academic" so to speak. Engineering degrees, these days, are more practical; they include aspects of H&S, management, business and real-world sytems not necessarily/exclusively design. There are currently IPEM accredited MSc courses in Biomedical Engineering/Medical Physics out there for those mature engineers with engineering qualifications. Another option perhaps.

At the end of the day whatever qualifications you have, I gained my real useful knowledge to do the job from experience working on equipment and from manufacturers training courses.

And I sincerely hope that experience is taken into account come AfC and for the purposes of professional registration Ken. Academic qualifications are not the be all and end all as you say.

Isn't this AfC all down to writing a good, all inclusive, high points scoring job description and in this case the person specifiction as well.
The assessment is not done on a person but the paperwork associated with the post. If the person spec says a degree or equivalent experience then that is what is assessed. You do not have to present to the panel your experience to prove what you have done. It is assumed your manager assessed that it was OK when you were employed.
If "a degree or equivalent" scores more points be grateful it might increase your pay band.
Robert

Good points.

Yes it is down to how you write your job description. It is essential to write it in such a way so that the matching panel have no doubt as to what you mean.
As mentioned in an earlier posting it is factor 2 'Knowledge & Skills' and factor 12 'Freedom to Act' that are the main hurdles.
Most techs I know are hoping for Band 6 rather than Band 5 with pay protection so you have to look carefully at the definitions in the Job Evaluation handbook to achieve the required level in those two factors.
The other 14 factors don't appear to be that difficult to achieve particularly when you consider that you can be marked down on up to 4 of the remaining factors by one level and still get a job match.

I appreciate the fact that every job in our particular profession is slightly different between each NHS Trust.

And that these differences will be highlighted when the job descriptions are written-up and then subsequently matched to the national profiles.

However, we also know that there's a considerable amount of common ground between our activities. Which suggests that in the spirit of professional collaboration, it should be possible for those EI sites already job-matched to share their job descriptions with the rest of us still to jump through that hoop.

The more information we have about how job descriptions are being constructed in the EI sites the better.

Or am I missing something here?