EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues VRCT - Who's Re-Newed?

This was published on the NHS Employers website in November so I can't see the MSC programme being cut off.

MSC checklist


04/11/2010

NHS Employers has produced a checklist to help employers prepare for the next stage of Modernising Scientific Careers (MSC).

MSC is an opportunity to refocus and re-energise the healthcare science workforce to meet the increasing demands of future healthcare delivery. NHS Employers has produced the following checklist which provides practical steps that employers should take to engage with, and support, the implementation of MSC.

Identify a person as an MSC co-ordinator or lead and make sure he/she is known to the SHA MSC lead. You should also consider the membership of your project group.

Ensure all stakeholders, including the board, staff and trade unions understand the aims and outcomes of the MSC programme.

Ensure senior managers are on board with the transformation of healthcare science careers.

Identify and locate all of your current healthcare science workforce on the electronic staff record (ESR).

Undertake a full profile map of your current healthcare science workforce by age, specialism and skills profile.

Undertake an analysis of work done by grade of scientist.

Match your current workforce to MSC practitioner/scientist/ senior scientist/consultant roles.

Review current use of skills and grades against current and future service requirements.

Start discussions with PCT commissioners on innovative ways of delivering services and tendering for education in partnership with the SHA.

Create skills profiles for new, more efficient care pathways and look at maximising opportunities with assistant and associate roles.

Drive innovation in care pathways and location of delivery of care with senior-level scientists, engaging senior scientific staff to make the most of their existing knowledge and skills.

Provide tools and support for workforce development and transformation, seeking input from clinical and non-clinical fields.

Assess capacity to act as a training establishment, placement provision and capacity and quality of training provided.

Develop future training and recruitment strategies for healthcare scientists.

Develop the assistant and associate workforce, including clear pathways to qualified practitioner and scientist roles.

Ensure current workforce is either regulated or part of a voluntary register, where available.

Identify potential links with other local NHS providers in order to maximise opportunities for sharing knowledge and best practice, and broaden workforce development opportunities.

Lessons learnt from the early adopter project will allow us to continually build our knowledge and provide employers with updated information and guidance on the implementation of MSC.

This statement is out of date, it mentions collaborations with the PCT's. Aren't the gov't scrapping PCT's?
But the main issue here is, are we Healthcare Scientists? I don't know about you but I'm a Service Engineer who happens to work on Medical Equipment. I do not deliver care to paitents, I get leaned on by clinical/ scientific staff to get their equipment back ASAP so that THEY can use it on patients. And as for status/ remuneration, my colleauges and I are doing ok thank you very much.

Any vacancies, I wonder, for this MSC Checklist "Practitioner" (whatever) lark? Working through that pile of BS should keep me "engaged" for a few years at least. Just as long as they keep paying the salary.

And just think of all those jolly meetings, travel claims, meals on expenses, and all the rest!

OK ... back to reality. Kit to be fixed!

PCT's have to be referred to still because they still exist at the time of writing.

The proposals refer to the 'umbrella' of Healthcare Science, which service engineers, medical equipment engineers, technical support engineers, clinical technologists or my own personal favourite, technical support officers come under.

Healthcare Science is all professions within the NHS workforce that can be considered to be within that category, no matter how different the jobs are.

You are right Bill all of us here are service engineers. No healthcare scientist or clinical engineer will bother to come to ebme site.

It was after a review in november or december 2010 that they started talking about MSC and getting rid of the grandparenting route to entry. So the new government has surely not forgot about we poor people.

What are we upto with no course for primary route? I dont know. but I am sure they will come out with a course. VRCT has given a very precise list of the topics they want included in the course.

As RoJo said, there are no courses for MET(med engg tech) but there are for renal tech, nuclear medicine and rehab tech. Hopefully, some day some university will come out with a course for us as well. If nothing comes up, they will have to introduce a 'Extended Extended Grandparenting' route so that they are not out of business. They have a list of about 3000 ppl now and cannot just stop accepting applications as there are many more people working on medical equipment in hospitals.

@ Biomed
we come in allied healthcare professionals not in helthcare science or scientists

@ Tejas

We come under the staff group: Additional Professional Scientific & Technical

Has Eastwood Park given up, then?

they have not got theirs accredited by VRCT so it will just give knowledge not certification.

Shouldn't take too much to get that sorted out, I wouldn't have thought.

After all, it looks like most of the boxes are being ticked already!