Healthcare science national delivery plan consultation: analysis of responses

5.0 Workforce Re-profiling and Competency Frameworks

How might the knowledge and skills of the HCS workforce in existing roles be more effectively utilised, and how can roles be extended to work with medical colleagues?

5.1 Summary of what you told us around workforce

There was overwhelming support for the proposals in the workforce section of the NDP, with a desire "to bridge the gap between the operational and strategic levels in HCS".

In general terms national workforce planning for HCS is inadequate, with each health board developing a different approach, there requires to be mapping exercises of diagnostic services before skill matching to tasks can be performed. There is also a requirement for consideration to be given to the likely location of posts when workforce planning. A model based on that of specialist training for medical consultants may be more appropriate to ensure greater mobility.

Graph 11 shows the percentage and count of respondent's replies on all Workforce Proposals within the consultation document. Opinion statement replies have been categorised as Agree, Disagree and Mixed.

One health board responded highlighting that there was nothing in the delivery plan about cross-disciplinary training, especially to support 24/7 services: "Extended roles for HCS in blood science's needs, in the first instance, to be around extending the range of disciplines that a HCSs can operate safely in to provide a core service."

The IBMS has established certificates of achievement for support staff which has the potential to be modified and introduced across other HCS roles.

There was concern within Physiology around medical workforce planning, that lacks to address the impact that new and developing services will have on HCS service provision, lack of a sustainable workforce plan for future Physiology services.

Concerns were raised around the actual capacity within the HCS workforce, to take the potential opportunity to work within their top quartile, due to the day-to-day operational routine workload.

One individual response raised concerns around the accreditation of professionals, in that it is very difficult to recruit from outwith the NHS. There is the requirement for a more flexible use of equivalence.

Responses from the Physical Sciences stream indicated the requirement for posts at Bands 3, 4 and 5.

"At postgraduate scientist level there are unhelpful variations across Scotland in terms of the buy-in by medical colleagues to 'allowing' Healthcare Science staff undertake certain duties. Some boards appear more relaxed about pathology dissection by advanced-practitioner biomedical scientists, scientific-clinical reporting in haematology, microbiology and neurophysiology. The promotion of current good practice must be a priority. Fundamentally this is about releasing capacity in all sectors of the clinical workforce. Representation and an advocacy of the merits of this shift will be enhanced by senior scientific representation in NHS Boards' decision-making."