Advocacy Efforts Aligned to the MPCE Workforce

We continue to engage at a national level to ensure that the scale and impact of workforce challenges across all areas of clinical engineering and medical physics are clearly understood across the system.

While much of this work relates to NHS workforce planning, we recognise that many members work across a broader range of sectors and that these challenges have wider relevance.

IPEM is actively progressing discussions with national bodies across all professional groups, including clinical engineering, clinical technologists and Medical Physics Experts to support the breadth of our workforce.

We know from you and your departments that there are sustained pressures across all areas of MPCE, with high vacancy rates, constrained training pipelines and increasing reliance on a limited number of experienced individuals. In some areas, provision remains below recommended levels, creating risks to service resilience and delivery.

Our approach is to ensure this evidence base is clearly understood by national stakeholders, including the implications for patient safety, regulatory compliance and service continuity. This includes highlighting increasing service fragility, where workforce shortages are contributing to operational pressures and, in some cases, regulatory intervention. Thank you to everyone who has contributed insights and local evidence.

Encouragingly, this work is gaining traction, with growing recognition at a national level of both the scale of the challenge and the need for coordinated action. Our focus remains on ensuring this evidence is clearly understood by key stakeholders.

Building on this momentum, for MPE we’re working with colleagues nationally to explore how greater flexibility can be introduced into workforce models, training pathways and service delivery. We’re also exploring how training capacity can be expanded, including support for alternative routes where appropriate. The aim is to support the development of improved levels of capacity and capability within the system, both now and for the future.

We’re also working to ensure that MPCE is fully included in the national fragility framework, which is currently being trialled.

We’ll continue to keep members updated as this work progresses and as opportunities for engagement arise.

Gill Collinson 

CEO