Clinical Technologist Robin McDade argues that Calls to Regulate Sonographers are Welcome, but must go Wider to Safeguard Standards and Safety
It was excellent to see such strong national attention on the Society of Radiographers (SoR) call for statutory regulation of Sonographers. Their commitment to championing patient safety and professional standards reflects a shared priority with IPEM, ensuring that all professionals working in these critical areas are recognised, supported and appropriately regulated to safeguard quality of care.
At IPEM, we believe that statutory regulation must go further, extending to professionals working as Clinical Technologists, regardless of their scope of practice.
The work of Clinical Technologists is complex, scientific and technical, and includes performing complex procedures on patients, often on vulnerable groups such as children, looking after specialist medical devices and preparing and administering treatments such as radioactive injections.
Despite their patient facing roles, Clinical Technologists, including Sonographers, are currently subject only to voluntary registration via the Register of Clinical Technologists (RCT), which is run by a partnership of IPEM, the Association of Renal Technologists (ART) and the Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estates Management (IHEEM).
The RCT does provide a valuable service and we would encourage Technologists to join it. Practitioners on the register must have completed an IPEM, ART or CASE accredited training course involving a relevant degree and work-based training to achieve a set of nationally agreed competencies defined separately for each of the Scopes of Practice and assessed by experienced assessors.
There is also an equivalence route designed to enable technologists to achieve registration by demonstrating that their levels of knowledge and skills are at least equivalent to those offered by the relevant Scope of Practice and the RCT Equivalence Standards - Engineering or RCT Equivalence Standards – Physics. All registrants are required to re-register each year, confirming that they have carried out continuous professional development and that they do and will abide by the RCT Code of Conduct.
However, being voluntary, we believe that only around half of Clinical Technologists are members of the RCT. This means that half of the UK’s Clinical Technologists are therefore able to practice unregistered; and can continue to practice even if removed from the voluntary register or sanctioned by their employer, which is precisely one of the arguments being made by the SoR around Sonographers.
The specific nature of the work of Clinical Technologists means they can cause serious harm to patients if their knowledge, skills and practice are not up-to-date and meeting the required standards.
Clinical Technologists undertake complex, technical and sometimes invasive clinical interventions. They are specialists who tend to work autonomously and often unsupervised, including alone in the homes of vulnerable patients (e.g., rehabilitation engineers, renal technologists), or in hospital settings without direct supervision, such as scanning rooms or patient preparation areas.
They work in a fast-moving area of medical care, where scientific and engineering solutions to patient needs and treatment pathways are constantly developing. So, while medical device regulation and treatment protocols are helpful, they are not sufficient to prevent harm. A good device allied to sub-standard practice can cause serious harm to the patient.
While we recognise and commend the SoR for drawing much-needed attention to this important issue, we believe the Government has a unique opportunity to go further, by extending statutory regulation beyond Sonographers to include all Clinical Technologists, ensuring consistent professional standards and patient safety across the entire workforce.