Healthcare science - education and training provision: baseline review

2. Purpose of the paper

The National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care in Scotland (3) commits to undertaking a scoping review of HCS education. The current educational landscape for the HCS workforce in Scotland is complex. To better understand this landscape, an initial baseline survey has been carried out which focuses on the 5 aims outlined below.

Figure 1: 5 aims the initial baseline survey focused on

Aim 1 - To identify the training and education programmes utilised by each HCP specialty accross the career framework as outlined in Modernising Scientific Career Framework

Aim 2 - To identify the training and education programmes/pathways through which HCS staff progress to attain voluntary or statutory registration

Aim 3 - To identify the different programmes that support the stages outlined in Modernising Scientific Career Framework

Aim 4 - To analyse the education and training programmes and career frameworks in Scotland to ensure that there is a sustainable HCS workforce for the future

Aim 5 - To analyse the emerging roles at each of the stages and to identify the education and training programmes required to suppot them

2.1 Approach

In October 2020, a draft project plan and stakeholder map was presented to the National HCS Leads to ensure that the proposed content of the survey was appropriate and key stakeholders identified. The Survey was structured into 3 component parts each examining part of the educational pathway - undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level study to reflect the HCS career pathway (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Overview of the HCS education career framework

Associate/Assistant

Healthcare Scientist Practitioner

Clinical Scientist

Consultant Healthcare Scientist

Feedback on the survey structure and questions was provided by a core group of stakeholders prior to circulation to the full stakeholder list. Following several requests for an extension to the deadline, the initial completion date of March 31^st 2022 was extended to April 15^th 2022.

2.2 Survey responses

Overall there was a good response to all 3 surveys, with returns received from Health Boards, Networks /Consortiums and Heads of Service – Figure 3

Figure 4 demonstrates the returns received for each survey for each HCS stream. There have been no returns from the Bioinformatics/data science stream of HCS, this may be due to the minimal number of professionals working within this field in Scotland.

In order to capture responses from all HCS specialities, follow up consultation sessions took place with Maxillofacial Prosthetics, Gastrointestinal Physiology and Clinical Perfusion. Further discussions took place with the chair of the Clinical Engineering National Network regarding the Clinical Engineering workforce and Ophthalmic and Vision Science.

All specialisms within Life Sciences are represented across the 3 surveys which included responses from Public Health Scotland and Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) Manufacturing and Testing.