Healthcare science national delivery plan 2015 to 2020: final report

6. Next steps

Development of the Healthcare Science Professional Leadership role in NHS Scotland

We will:

• Work in partnership with NHS Boards to increase the number of Healthcare Scientists in professional leadership roles to raise visibility and maximise their contribution;
• Work collaboratively with Healthcare Science Leads Group to explore the development of a national job description for a Healthcare Science Professional Lead role;
• Engage with CEO and Medical Directors at NHS Boards to build on opportunities of substantiated Professional Leadership roles for Healthcare Science in each NHS Board.

Workforce Data standards, coding arrangements and guidance for healthcare science

We will:

• Work in partnership with NHS Boards to review and improve data standards for healthcare science, to model and ultimately enable workforce planning for healthcare scientists;
• Work with NHS Education for Scotland to improve the current data on the specialty of healthcare science staff to support evidence based workforce modelling.

Healthcare Science Education and Workforce Scoping Review

We will:

• Work in partnership with key partners to take forward a Healthcare Science Education and Workforce review in order to:
• understand the workforce needs in order to understand the actions required to ensure a sustainable workforce for the future
• ensure that the ecosystem of diagnostics is supported by enabling existing Healthcare Scientists (HCSs) roles to be better understood and supported to maximise their development along with emerging roles that also have a valuable contribution to the delivery of health and social care priorities;
• Work with NHS Boards and NHS Education for Scotland to undertake a scoping exercise to determine the current provision and efficacy of education and training programmes for all healthcare science professions that are utilised by each NHS Board, how these are funded and delivered, and by which higher education / further education institute;
• Work with NHS Education for Scotland to review whether the education and training programmes that are utilised by NHS Boards, provide the ability to attain professional, accredited and / or statutory registration;
• Work with partners to hear their views on whether the available education and training programmes support the emerging roles and the opportunities to extend roles due to remobilisation; new methodologies and technologies and further new ways of working and what more needs to be done to meet their needs.

Promoting research, development and innovation

We will:

• Create a strategic research priorities framework for Healthcare Scientists, providing clarity on ‘what it is’ currently and how it operates in Scotland;
• Identify future research that will place the professions in Scotland at the forefront of their field;
• Create a research infrastructure with a particular focus on capacity building and capability development, generating a clear set of objectives and actions to achieve this.

Building capacity in quality improvement and improving quality of services

We will:

• Work collaboratively with the National Demand Optimisation Group (NDOG) and NHS Boards to build upon the work of the National Demand Optimisation Programme across clinical pathways;
• Work in partnership with NHS Boards to improve quality and delivery of services by facilitating the implementation of interventions to drive more appropriate testing and use of resources and continue to build capacity in quality improvement;
• Work in partnership with Primary Care General Practice to develop a national process that highlights unwarranted variation across primary care:
• Nationally utilise the data in the Atlas of Variation to drive continuous quality improvements in primary care requesting;
• Work in partnership with NHS Boards to align the Atlas of Variation quality improvement tool to the NHS Recovery Plan.

Professional Healthcare Regulation

We will:

• Following the closing of the current UK-wide consultation, (published on 6 January 2022,) which considers (Healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)) we will use the policy opportunity to make an evidence-based case for further regulation to DHSC and the Devolved Administrations based on the level of risk presented by certain healthcare science professions.