This month we ask: What can we as a profession do to support the NHS?
Tony Cambridge
Lead Biomedical Scientist, Blood Sciences and Point of Care Testing
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust
Many healthcare services are reliant on the work our profession delivers every hour of every day. If we don’t deliver, optimal patient care cannot be provided. One of the most important things we can do as a profession is to safeguard the future of our services by developing today’s workforce and securing the workforce of the future.
Knowledge, experience, and specialist skills need to be nurtured across our profession, especially with the recruitment and retention issues that some organisations are experiencing. Clear routes of progression, with equal opportunities for all, will improve retention, attract new recruits and deliver succession plans.
Attention is required in developing new roles to react to current demands and emerging threats. As the population gets older and treatments more effective, there will be year-on-year increases in workload, driving more automation across the specialties with adoption of clinical decision-making tools and artificial intelligence. This will bring opportunities for those interested in technical, data analysis and IT-related roles.
However, as personalised and precision medicine experience increased adoption, the profession needs to plan now to create and support the specialist roles of the future. We need to develop workforce plans that will meet future challenges.
Bamidele Farinre
Consultant Biomedical Scientist
Locum
Our beautiful biomedical science profession plays a significant role in so many aspects of healthcare. The roles of biomedical scientists are integral to patient care and wellbeing in supporting their immediate clinical team decisions regarding diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Without biomedical science, the diagnosis and treatment of numerous illnesses and diseases would be unquestionably more complex.
The NHS has been suffering staff shortages for years due to unsatisfactory workforce planning and insufficient funding and infrastructure. Increasing workload pressures are becoming unsustainable and declining wellbeing creates an environment of stress, burn out and mental health and wellbeing issues.
As a profession, we will continue to do our part in creating a sustainable NHS of the future by making every contact count. This is achieved by using every contact with an individual to maintain or improve their mental and physical health and wellbeing where possible. Managers can support by identifying where healthcare professionals’ skills and knowledge for making every contact count need development and working with public health and education and training partners to support this.
We should also all share learning about improving the public’s health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities, and seek to learn from others.
Azuma Kalu
Laboratory Manager, Specialised Clinical Chemistry & Toxicology
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
As a profession, we have to do more to modernise and respond to the changing digital world. The practice of the profession is so intertwined with technology that our productivity is not only moderated by the equipment but also the connectivity that enables the equipment to interact and transmit results. To assist in the delivery of diagnostic activity levels that will support plans to address NHS backlogs and the diagnostic waiting time, more commitment is needed from the profession to push for better technologies and connectivity.
With more access to dietary options, leading to an increase in metabolic and cardiovascular conditions, increase in life expectancy and consequent rise in old age-related health conditions, there is enormous financial stress on the NHS to meet many of the healthcare-related demands. We have to continue to innovate to increase our productivity and become more sustainable with access to remote reporting, consolidation of specialist services, lean management, focusing on environmentally friendly practices. By so doing, we will support the achievement of a cost-effective NHS.
With steps such as capacity building, modernising our technologies and improved connectivity, switching off the computer after each working day and implementing environmentally friendly practices, the profession can do a lot to support NHS priorities.
Image credit | Getty