Modernising Scientific Careers

NHS Employers is seeking your views on the next phase of the UK-wide programme to modernise scientific careers in the NHS. The four UK health departments have published a consultation document, which sets out proposals to transform and develop the healthcare scientist workforce. In England, the proposals are part of the implementation plans resulting from the Next Stage Review's A High Quality Workforce.

• About the consultation
• Your views and feedback
• Background information
• About the healthcare scientists workforce

About the consultation

The consultation will run for 13 weeks, ending on 27 February 2009. We will be working with employers over the next three months to inform our response and and we will be seeking responses by 13 February. The full consultation document 'The Future of the Healthcare Science Workforce, Modernising Scientific Careers: The Next Steps' is available from, the Department of Health's website. The consultation covers seven key areas:

1 Challenges of modern healthcare

• greater and more complex demand
• science, technology and innovation
• changing workforce needs
• leadership development
• evolving financial and regulatory environments

2 The case for changing training and courses

• workforce planning
• education and training
• regulation

3 Vision for healthcare science

4 The MSC programme

• raising the profile of the healthcare science workforce and careers
• adding value to healthcare
• planning the workforce
• ensuring secure and sustainable funding
• delivering explicit training and career pathways
• implementing standards and quality underpinned by assessment
• delivering safe and effective services to patients

5 The proposed training and career pathways. Three stages of training and career pathway

• Healthcare Science Assistants (HCSA)
• Healthcare Scientist Practitioners (HCSP)
• Healthcare Scientists (HCS)

6 The educational framework

• development of a curriculum

7 Implementation

• establishing infrastructure
• workforce modelling
• transitional arrangements

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Your views and feedback

We would like your views on the proposals listed in the document and will be inviting you to contribute to this important change in one of a number of ways:

• email your views to scienceworkforce@nhsemployers.org
• respond to our online questionnaire, which is being developed
• attend one of our consultation events (dates to be confirmed).

If you have any general comments or questions about the modernising science careers programme please email us: scienceworkforce@nhsemployers.org

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Background information

The Department of Health's Modernising Scientific Careers (MSC) workforce programme is designed to ensure flexibility, sustainability and modern career pathways to address the needs of the future NHS.

It is an opportunity to modernise the education and training pathways for the totality of the healthcare science workforce and its 51 constituent disciplines in a structure that supports consistency, coherence and equity for tomorrow's clinicians.

MSC will also ensure that the healthcare science workforce is able to engage, influence and lead developments with other professionals within the NHS to ensure high quality care for all and to support patient safety standards.

The following underpin this project.

National Occupational Standards in healthcare science

Work on developing over 600 functional National Occupational Standards (NOS) for healthcare scientists was completed in 2004. Skills for Health has been commissioned to undertake further work on these to make them applicable to individual healthcare scientist roles. This further work is expected to be completed by early 2009.

Healthcare Science career framework

This framework was published in 2005 and aims to:

• introduce an integrated career framework encompassing all disciplines and employment groups within the workforce based on roles and function and linked to transferable skills and competences
• clearly identify pathways for progression and transfer, supported by learning and development providing enhanced opportunities
• provide national consistency and maximum flexibility to support local service delivery, the expansion and extension of current roles and the emergence of new roles.

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About the healthcare scientists workforce

There are around 50,000 healthcare scientists (HCS) in England. The roles are highly specialist and some are the equivalent of a medical consultant. There are 51 separate disciplines grouped into the following three areas.

• Life sciences and genetics, for example, anatomical pathology, blood transfusion and transplantation science, clinical biochemistry and electron microscopy.
• Physiological sciences, for example, audiology, clinical perfusion, hearing therapy and neurophysiology.
• Physical sciences and clinical engineering, for example, biomechanical engineering, radiation protection and monitoring, maxillofacial prosthetics and reconstruction and renal dialysis technology.

There are over 45 separate entry routes to becoming a healthcare scientist, two of these groups are regulated by statute. There are diverse career pathways for each of the 51 different disciplines and qualifications for each vary widely.

Some of the professional groups require registration, for example, clinical scientists and biomedical scientists but these are not linked to clinical risk.