David Wells, IBMS Chief Executive, on the Institute helping members recruit skilled and qualified staff.
The HCPC recently published the retention rates from across their professional registers and it seems that biomedical scientists have bucked the overall trend of the last few years by remaining consistent. Once we get into our profession, we tend to stay here.
The most interesting difference was seeing that 70% of newly registered biomedical scientists are now female. Given that only 66% of our current membership are female, it follows that the future of the profession will be even more female. I think diverging from most STEM careers in this area gives our profession a wonderful opportunity – to lead the way and set the standards in professional progress for women in science.
However, the career path of a biomedical scientist after registration is often not as hard to navigate as getting there in the first place. That’s why our “Routes to Registration” project is underway – spreading information about routes into the profession to college and sixth-form students, careers advisors, undergraduates and graduates across the UK.
We have started by making sure that every IBMS Accredited university across the country has appropriate leaflets and information to hand out to their prospective students this year – informing them about IBMS Accredited degrees, registration training and HCPC requirements before they make any choices that might negatively impact their career paths.
We are now in the process of scripting and commissioning four short videos that will be used on our website and on social media to give accessible and clear information about the choices and routes available to the people in our key demographics who might not be directly within our reach.
We will follow this up with campaign posters and further leaflets for careers advisors and careers fairs, and attempts to get these into the hands of those who will benefit from understanding the quickest and easiest routes to HCPC registration as a biomedical scientist. I hope you will find them useful in your outreach work and share them with your wider network.
Alongside accrediting course content and providing training systems that meet HCPC requirements, we want to provide the means to make sure that more people than ever understand that their education choices are also career choices. This will help our members to recruit the skilled and qualified staff they need, at the level they need them.
David Wells Chief Executive