AHCS, NSHCS, HEE, LETB, IPEM, STP, PTP, HSST…… A big alphabetical soup or acronyms that we need to know about?

Here’s the glossary

AHCS - Academy of Healthcare Scientists (http://www.ahcs.ac.uk) – An umbrella organisation that endeavours to ‘look after’ all healthcare scientists, providing a membership subscription service, manage the healthcare scientist and technology registers, organise meetings etc.

NSHCS – National school of healthcare science (http://www.nshcs.org.uk ) – A virtual school that produces a national curriculum for both PTP, STP and HSST training (see below for definitions). Is responsible for organising assessment of training and administration of examinations and recruitment into these programmes.

HEE - Health Education England (http://www.hee.nhs.uk). Part of the NHS, the HEE is responsible in defining how education and training will be delivered specifically for the NHS workforce. NB Local Education and Training Boards (LETBs), are statutory committees of HEE.

IPEM – Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (http://www.ipem.ac.uk) – A charity organisation and professional body that invites membership from Physicists and Engineers working in the medical sciences or healthcare. Endeavours to provide support to its members in the form of scientific conferences, information networks and to provide information to the public about all matters to do with physics and engineering in medicine.

PTP – practitioner training programme. (http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-career/healthcare-science/training/nhs-practitioner-training-programme-(ptp)/)

STP – Scientist training programme (http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-career/healthcare-science/training/nhs-scientist-training-programme-(stp)/).

HSST – Higher specialist scientist training programme (http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-career/healthcare-science/training/nhs-higher-specialist-scientific-training-(hsst)/).

How do they all fit together?

One could argue that the creation of the AHCS is in direct competition to the IPEM in that it is an entity that purports to be a professional body and does all the things that we want to do but for ALL healthcare scientists ~ 55K at last count against our ~5K of physicists and engineers. But then one could also argue we already have that situation with the Institute of Physics (IOP) and yet we still exist and most of us are happy to distinguish ourselves from the general physics community in much the same way I’m sure that we would distinguish ourselves from the majority of healthcare scientists. It’s also worth a mention that the IPEM already have representation in both these organisations. 3 IPEM trustees sit on the Medical Physics Group at the IOP and the President sits on the council of the AHCS alongside ~ 40 other healthcare science professions who it has to be said are quite glad to be able to ally themselves to a larger and possibly better provider of community resources than they are. I think that it is important to note at this point that it is the AHCS that have been commissioned by the HEE to administrate the statutory register for healthcare science professions.

Similarly the NSHCS could also be seen as a direct competitor to the IPEM, and the side that won the fight!! Most of us know that about 5 years ago the IPEM training underwent a radical change, namely that it was subsumed into the NSHCS training programme for all healthcare scientists in the NHS as part of the Modernising Scientific Careers commissioned by the Dept. of Health (DOH). I will not be providing a history lesson here. Much has already been said and ranted about the IPEM losing status as a well respected provider of an already thorough training scheme but what I do think worth ranting about now is in fact that rather than being shut out, members of the IPEM are still very much involved in the design and delivery of the syllabus for the physics and engineering streams of PTP and STP. It has far from slipped from our fingers. However, while members have tried to provide a good solid content to the syllabus we would not want the IPEM to be identified with the slightly chaotic administration of the programmes. But it’s early days and I’m sure that after another couple of rounds of trainees it will feel more robust. Which brings me to the HSST. I guess the biggest criticisms that members of IPEM have hurled at the NSHCS is the speed at which things have been done, often times  before resources are ready.  The HSST programme is no exception. Launched this year with the first interviews to take place on Mon July 14^th the delivery of academic content still has not been confirmed and I suspect that many hospital employers may not even know about it yet, or at least understood their role in it.  Again I want to shout out that members of IPEM have been closely involved in the development of the HSST programme. We haven’t always got we want but we have made it better than it would’ve been had we not been involved. I believe this is exciting (may be a little scary) times for the profession and by proxy for the IPEM.  The IPEM membership should take this environment of radical change and use it’s momentum to initiate change in the way we perceive and use IPEM resources.  Put yourself in Sue Hill’s shoes – Modernising Physics and Engineering Careers – what would you turn on its head?