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How the
application was prepared
The desire amongst medical
illustrators for their profession to be registered goes back over 50
years. Previous attempts, although unsuccessful, paved the way for the
professional bodies to organise qualifications, CPD, codes of conduct and
a voluntary register of practitioners. So when the Department of Health
launched Making the Change in 2001 as part of the NHS Plan, and it became
clear that government were intent on regulating all healthcare professions
with direct patient contact, we were ready.
The initial contact with both the Department of Health (DoH) and the newly
formed Health Professions Council (HPC) was made by Carol Fleming and
Keith Bellamy (the then Chairman and Chairman Elect of IMI). It was the
DoH who chose to deal with IMI as the largest of the professional bodies
representing medical illustrators. CAMIP formalised that decision on
behalf of all the professional bodies by commissioning IMI to act on its
behalf to prepare the application.
The application was coordinated by Carol, Keith and Martin Johns (it was
Martin who was Chairman of IMI when Making the Change was launched) who
met in February 2004. In order for the application to be successful, the
profession had to satisfy 11 criteria:
1. Eligibility for regulation based on whether the occupation involves at
least one of the following activities.
i. Invasive procedures
ii. Clinical intervention with the potential for harm
iii. Exercise of judgment by unsupervised professionals which can
substantially impact on patient health or welfare
2. The occupation must cover a discrete area of activity displaying some
homogeneity.
3. The occupation must apply a defined body of knowledge.
4. The occupation must practice based on evidence of efficacy.
5. The occupation must have at least one established professional body
which accounts for a significant proportion of that occupational group.
6. The occupation must operate a voluntary register.
7. The occupation must have defined routes of entry to the profession.
8. The occupation must have independently assessed entry qualifications.
9. The occupation must have standards of conduct, performance and ethics.
10. The occupation must have disciplinary procedures to enforce those
standards.
11. The occupation must require commitment to continuous professional
development (CPD).
Carol, Keith and Martin planned the content to satisfy each of these
criteria and then commissioned willing volunteers to write the necessary
words and start collecting the evidence. The submission was essentially in
two parts: Part One was the complete application including all the
evidence to support the claims we were making. Four copies of this were
provided which were carefully examined and ‘scored’ by the HPC Executive.
Part Two was a summary document of one page per criteria. Sixty two copies
of this were provided which were distributed to the HPC Council members
for their consideration.
Because so many different people were contributing content, Carol and
Keith spent many hours reworking it to be in a consistent style, while
Martin coordinated the gathering of evidence (spending many hours in the
library) to support what we were saying. We were also very fortunate to
have the support of Sue Hill, the Chief Scientific Officer at the DoH and
Pat Saunders, Head of Regulation at the DoH. These two gave us useful
feedback on the content of the application and were able to look at it
with the ‘non-professional’ eye. It was at this stage they advised us not
to include medical artists and graphic designers in the application, since
the case for them needing regulation was felt to be harder to make.
Eventually we got it finished to our satisfaction (not before there were
some hiccups over submission dates) and sent it in on August 4th. We had
been told the Council would consider the application over two meetings: In
September they would consider the Executive’s scoring of the full
submission and their own consideration of the summary document. We would
then receive feedback about any areas where the application failed to meet
the 11 criteria and would be required to address those in a presentation
to the October meeting of Council. In the event, both the Executive and
the Council were satisfied we had met all the criteria (the first time an
application has done that) and it wasn’t necessary for us to present to
the October meeting.
Carol and Keith attended the Council meeting as members of the public and
were able to listen to the very complimentary comments made about the
application. Pat Saunders was also in the audience and was clearly very
pleased for us (the DoH will use our documentation as an exemplar for
other professions).
The next stage in the process is to work with the DoH to craft the
necessary legislation for parliament, which we expect to begin in
November. If all goes according to timetable (general election willing)
then the State Register for Clinical Photographers should be opened
sometime in 2005.
Carol, Keith and Martin would like to pay tribute to everybody who has
been involved in the preparation of this successful application – not only
those directly involved in contributing content and evidence, but also
those in the past who have helped pave the way by ensuring the medical
illustration profession and professional bodies were built on solid
foundations. At the end of the day, demonstrating we met the 11 criteria
was relatively straightforward because as a mature profession we already
had everything in place.
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Updated:
06 November 2006 20:00
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