Professional updates

European Antibiotic Awareness Day

fdds Medical professional looking through a microscope European Antibiotic Awareness Day (EAAD) was established to annually highlight the problem of antibiotic resistance and the need for appropriate use of antibiotics in hospitals and primary care. It aims to raise the awareness of the issues among prescribers, non-prescribing healthcare professionals, patients and medical students. This year's EAAD takes place on 18^th November 2011.

For more information on EAAD and the events taking place please see the Meetings and Events page.

The new ACB MG

In October 2009 it was accepted by majority vote that the Association of Clinical Microbiologists would dissolve and form a new Special Interest Group of the Association for Clinical Biochemistry called the Microbiology Group. On 1^st July 2010 all existing members of the ACM automatically became members of the ACB. Being members of the ACB brings additional benefits such as free membership of the Federation of Clinical Scientists, a nationally recognised trade union representing trainee and registered clinical scientists, discounted registration to the highly successful annual national Focus meetings, the bi-monthly journal Annals of Clinical Biochemistry, the monthly magazine ACB News and professional support for Clinical Microbiologists.

ACB subscriptions are higher than the old ACM ones, so to help our membership to adjust to this the former ACM Council negotiated that the residual assets of the ACM were transferred to the ACB and used to provide a fixed subsidy of membership fees during the first three years for all members who had paid their ACM membership fees by May 31^st 2010. For the second half of 2010 members paid no additional subscription, and subscriptions will be subsidised by £55 in 2011, £35 in 2012 and £25 in 2013. As the ACB subscription is based upon your pay grade this represents a larger proportion of the subscription for those on lower pay bands, and although those on higher pay grades will have seen an increase in their subscriptions those on lower pay grades will not have seen a difference or may even had received a reduction in their subscription. The Administration Office will send details of your new subscriptions at the appropriate time, but if you have any queries about this please get in touch using the 'Contact us' details on the Home page.

Further details on the changes that have occurred from our re-formation within the ACB, including the subsidy and how you can get involved in the new MPC and the wider ACB such as joining committees and writing articles, can be found in the joint letter written by ACB MPC Chair Professor Paul Klapper and ACB President Dr Julian Barth. We will also keep you updated here with all the latest information as we have it, so watch this space.

Modernising Scientific Careers

The UK health departments are currently implementing a new programme that will redesign and redefine the careers of all healthcare scientists, termed the Modernising Scientific Careers (MSC) Programme. MSC is designed to ensure flexibility, sustainability and modern career pathways for healthcare scientists who are fit to address the needs of the future NHS. MSC is led by the Chief Scientific Officer, Professor Sue Hill OBE. You can read about some of the latest developments in the CSO’s work, including updates on MSC, events for healthcare scientists and the latest edition of the CSO Bulletin on the CSO’s webpages.

You can read about the latest developments in MSC on the CSO’s webpages of the Department of Health (DH) website and some historical documents are linked below:

• "Modernising Scientific Careers: The UK Way Forward" (February 2010)
• "The England Action Plan" (April 2010)
• "Safe Accurate and Effective: An Action Plan for Healthcare Science in NHS Scotland" (November 2007)
• "Statement on MSC from the Scottish Forum for Healthcare Science" (March 2010)
• "The Future Delivery of Pathology Services in Wales" (August 2008)

What is a Healthcare Scientist?

Healthcare scientist (HCS) is a developing term for all healthcare professionals working in pathology, and will include Clinical Scientists and Biomedical Scientists. HCSs will work in the new NHS that is being re-shaped by MSC. Once HCSs have been successfully trained under the new Scientist Training Programme (see the Training page for further details) they will be eligible for competitive entry into the Higher Speciality Scientific Training (HSST) programme. Successful completion of HSST will equip HCSs with the ability to compete for the highest level scientist roles and become Consultant HCSs.

The Modernising Scientific Careers Team of the Department of Health, with input from the relevant professions, has created a role descriptor for Consultant HCSs in the 3 divisions of Life Sciences: Infection Science (including Clinical Microbiology and Virology), Blood Science (including Clinical Biochemistry and Immunology) and Cellular Science (including Reproductive Science and Molecular Pathology). The role descriptor can be downloaded from the Members only page.

Our NHS, Our future – NHS Next Stage Review

Professor Lord Ara Darzi, former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and a consultant surgeon, was asked by the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health to lead the Next Stage Review of the NHS entitled ‘Our NHS, Our future’ in July 2007. This review set out a 10-year vision for the NHS with the aims of making it fairer, more personalised, effective and safe, and set out immediate and longer term priorities for the healthcare service. The review has underpinned work by all NHS organisations in areas such as improved models of care, Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) and workforce reviews.

More information and publications on this NHS Next Stage Review can be found on the DH website, and some historical documents are linked below:

• "Our NHS, Our Future: the contribution of Healthcare Scientists" (January 2008, draft)
• "High quality care for all: NHS Next Stage Review final report" (June 2008).

Modernising Healthcare Science Careers programme

From 2005 to 2007, Skills for Health undertook an extensive programme of work to modernise Healthcare Science careers. In March 2008 they produced the report “Modernising Healthcare Science Careers Final Programme”, which details the process and outcomes and includes some specific examples of the application of functions and competences of modernised approaches to education and training. Further information on Healthcare Science careers, including Career Frameworks, National Occupational Standards and Learning Packages, is available on the Skills for Health website.

Infectious Disease Research Network Student Placement Programme

This scheme, run by the IDRN, was successful last year and so will be repeated this year. The IDRN acts as a free match-making facility between talented and committed students and institutions in the United Kingdom, by allocating volunteers to infection-related research projects. Researchers looking for extra help on a study, with projects ranging from literature reviews to database work to basic laboratory skills, send details to the IDRN. At the same time, students looking for a work placement in a research institution register their interests and requirements. The IDRN then match the project to the student!

For more information and to register your interest see the IDRN website.