Professional development
employment at the time the register was founded. Anyone starting out as a clinical technologist after April 2007 could not join via this route, and grandfathering closed completely in 2010, as it was deemed that anyone who was eligible and wished to join would already have done so.
Accredited training courses Alongside the grandfather route, there were several accredited training courses which provided diplomas. Achievement of these was the primary route to registration, and these were, and still are, run by both IPEM and ART. With the emergence of the Modernising Scientific Careers programme, many universities began to offer Practitioner Training Programme (PTP) degrees. These training schemes combined both academic study and practical work-based training, leading to a BSc qualification. While the completion of a PTP degree or an accredited diploma are now the primary routes to registration, these are limited in number, and many departments – especially on the engineering side – continue to rely on other ‘in-house’ training schemes or apprenticeships which do not offer direct entry onto the RCT.
The equivalence route To meet growing demand from employers for routes to registration, the RCT has developed an equivalence route. Anyone who has a suitable degree-level qualification and is an experienced clinical technologist can now use this route to demonstrate to a team of RCT assessors that they meet the required level of competence to be granted entry to the RCT.
Development of equivalence The RCT has always had clearly defined scopes of practice for every role performed by clinical technologists. These set out what a newly qualified technologist is expected to be able to perform in order to be deemed competent at the point of registration. The RCT has recently carried out a thorough review and updated the scopes of practice to reflect changes in the clinical technologist profession, and has also carried out a mapping exercise to ensure that the curriculum of the IPEM and ART diplomas, as well as relevant PTP degrees, will meet every aspect of the scopes of practice. Only by periodically doing this can the RCT be assured that these can remain relevant as primary routes to entry.
In order to help someone demonstrate – through equivalence – that they are competent to work as a registered clinical technologist, the RCT has developed a set of criteria for each clinical technology discipline. These are available on the RCT website, and set out what an equivalence applicant needs to
66 Health Estate Journal September 2016
Testing of an X-ray machine.
demonstrate they are capable of doing in order to become registered.
Piloting work
The RCT has piloted both the physics and engineering equivalence routes with several volunteers and, through this process, guidance notes and actual anonymised reports have been developed which are available on the RCT website to assist applicants in putting together their own equivalence applications. It is expected that applicants write a report which is referenced against the equivalence criteria. This is then assessed by the RCT, and if all criteria have been met to an acceptable standard, then the applicant is admitted to the register. Anyone familiar with the Engineering Council process for assessing Engineering Technicians, Incorporated, and Chartered Engineers, will see a great deal of similarity between the processes used by the RCT and the Engineering Council. Indeed anyone applying for equivalence in an engineering discipline could use an amended version of their RCT equivalence report as the basis for an application to the Engineering Council if desired.
Generating an equivalence report
The equivalence criteria for each scope of practice have been broken down into several key functions, and applicants must demonstrate that they are competent in all areas. For the physics route the decision has been made to keep each discipline separate; however for engineering there is so much crossover between specialisms that is has been deemed that applicants can provide experiences from their own area of work to meet the criteria, irrespective of whether they work in renal, rehabilitation, radiation, or medical engineering.
Physics and engineering criteria
The physics criteria are divided into four basic categories – safe working practice, equipment management, good scientific practice, and a section directly covering the specific area of work of the applicant. These specific areas depend on the specialism of the applicant, but include nuclear medicine, radiation physics, radiation protection, radiopharmaceuticals, radiation transport and dosimetry, and quality control.
©IPEM/Fiona Wall
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