Healthcare science

Healthcare Science in the NHS incorporates all staff working in areas that are involved in science and technology and includes such diverse job roles as pulmonary function clinical scientists, hospital physicists, phlebotomists, anatomical pathology technologists, biomedical scientists, clinical photographers and so on.

In total there are said to be 46 different 'science' professions within the Health Services, totalling in the region of 40,000 or so employees. It is a fact of simple maths that biomedical scientists account for approaching half of these.

There has always been great merit in combining forces when addressing core issues and the Federation for Healthcare Science, formed in 2002, is the overarching organisation that speaks for the entire workforce. This of course, does not prevent any of the 46 professional body members from expressing individual views, but a collective view is clearly more powerful. The entire list of member organisations can been seen on the Federation website, www.fedhcs.net, but to list a few includes the Institute, ACB, AAPT, NAC, BAA, IPEM and so on. The Institute’s Executive also provides the secretariat with the Federation's formal address being 12 Coldbath Square.

For convenience the Federation subdivides into three divisions:

Life Sciences: which includes all the pathology related groups

Physical Sciences: hospital physicists and photographers etc...

Physiological Sciences: pulmonary function, audiology, cardiology, etc...

All three divisions have practitioners in bands ranging from 3/2 to 9.

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