ANNUAL NUMBERS OF CLINICAL SCIENTISTS ON THE HPC REGISTER
Data provided here was kindly provided by the HPC under the Freedom of information Act. It has been analysed each year by the ACS Administrative Office and presented to the ACS Board of Directors representing the various professions and now provides a unique insight into the number of registrant Clinical Scientists in the UK.
Candidates, career enquirers and professional bodies may wish to know how many clinical scientists are registered in the UK. Data can be obtained directly from the HPC under the Freedom of Information Act but the raw data can be confusing and difficult to interpret due to the coding system used. HPC registers you in the profession (with the reserved title) of "Clinical Scientist" which comprises a small group of the 205000 registrants on their database. HPC is not concerned over whether you are a physicist, microbiologist or embryologist. These are modalities necessary to both assess candidates for competency to be registered (assigning appropriate assessors by the ACS for UK applicants or for HPC to assign "HPC partners" for International applicants) as well as for investigating complaints against registrants (HPC assigning appropriate investigation officers).
There are 12 Modalities accepted by the ACS (see listed on page 3 here) which were coded by the Clinical Scientist Board of the CPSM in 2000 and accepted by the Privy Council. The HPC have in the intervening period created a further 40 modality/sub-modality codes for clinical scientist registrants on their database. Some of these are not recognised by the ACS and applicants cannot register with HPC through ACS in these inapprorpiate modalities/submodalities. They should also not be acceptable for international applications.
The HPC received many initial registrants through grandparenting and still receive and deal with direct International applications for registration. During these periods inaccuracies appear to have developed in the HPC coding on the database and these are still to be resolved by the HPC in coming years. All applications via the ACS assessment route have accurate and accepted modality data on the certificates provided to the HPC. Furthermore, there are also nearly 30% of the 4500+ clinical scientist registrants who have no recorded modality coding on the HPC database. Again HPC cannot explain how this has occurred - possibly incomplete HPC recording procedures or inaccurate information from applicants incorrectly accepted by HPC processors - and is looking into resolving this in the future.
It is therefore impossible to determine accurately workforce numbers of any particular profession due to the size of this Unclassified group. It is unexplained why this Unclassified group seems to be the largest growing section of the clinical scientist HPC register. However, it is very important for HPC who will need this information for any malpractice investigations to be dealt with as indicated above. ACS has provided a fully documented certificated route to HPC registration for some 200 applicants each year in designated modalities, while the overall number of clinical scientist registrants in the same periods only increased by 207 and 105 respectively. During these periods the HPC Unclassified figures have increased by 230 in 2009 and 234 in 2010. Figures for other professions on the register also show large numbers Unclassified in some cases, e.g. for Biomedical Scientists 20000 of the 22000 registrants are Unclassified.
The ACS Administrative Office has been collating and analysing data provided by the HPC annually since grandparenting concluded in July 2005 and that is presented here in summary form. The ACS has reported the problems with the HPC data to the HPC each year offering to utilise the databases of the professional bodies to clarify the situation, but the Data Protection Act prevents its resolution other than the HPC contacting registrants individually. We are understand HPC hope to rectify the matter now that electronic renewals are available for 2011.
No gender specific figures were available for 2005 but were available subsequently. It should be remembered that Clinical Scientists have to renew in the October of each odd year – 2007, 2009, 2011 etc. The data shown for the Spring immediately following these periods can therefore be indicative of retirements or of clinical scientists who have otherwise not renewed at the previous October. We hope you will find the the data interesting and it may help gain some insight into the relative numbers of clinical scientists on the register and able to work in the UK. As the details of Modernising Scientific Careers (MSC) are finalised and it comes into force, individuals interested in these careers may register as different protected titles and the data and its interpretation will change.
The ACS Administrative Office believes the data are accurate as provided by the HPC but welcomes any notice of errors or corrections for future presentations.