Healthcare science - education and training provision: baseline review

8. Conclusion

This is the first time the education and training landscape for Healthcare Science in Scotland has been reviewed. The survey feedback has demonstrated that there are areas of good practice and robust educational programmes in place. However, it has also highlighted areas that require further exploration or improvement.

The themes emerging from this survey are listed as:

1. Improved visibility HCS professions

2. Access routes across all HCS specialities

3. Education Programmes available for HCS specialities

4. National Education Infrastructure for HCS

5. Solutions for the challenges in the current education provision

6. Emerging roles across our HCS specialities

The survey has highlighted that further work is required to improve the visibility of the HCS workforce to improve the pipeline of a future workforce.

The issue of funding and lack of resource to support education and training is a recurring theme across all of 3 components of the survey.

The themes emerging will serve as a baseline for the forthcoming HCS education scoping review that will be carried out in line with the commitment within the National Workforce Strategy (3)

Further workforce engagement sessions will be planned to build upon this work to enable the development of the scoping review for HCS. This is an initial baseline information and inform themes of those sessions and we look forward to working collaboratively with the workforce and other key stakeholders to develop the future Healthcare Science workforce for Scotland.