Eli Gumble BEng RSciTech, Simulation Technician Lead at the London Simulation Network
Summary
In an effort to bring harmonisation to simulation technician job descriptions, a comparison framework of 38 responsibilities held by simulation technicians was developed. The responsibilities were established following a literature review, from a review of London-based job descriptions, from interviews with London-based technicians and from the author’s personal experience as a technician.
Fifty-seven simulation technician job descriptions from across London were scored for involvement in each responsibility by both the author and self-reporting simulation technicians. From this scoring process, lists of core, additional and specialist responsibilities for simulation technician jobs at each NHS Agenda for Change band were generated, referred to as “blueprints”.
A comparison tool in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was created where an existing or potential job can be scored and instantly compared to each blueprint, with a similarity percentage being generated and the band of the most similar blueprint to the input figures being stated. The tool can also recommend that a job is too dissimilar to any of the bands’ blueprints and that it may not be appropriate to name that job “simulation technician”.
The blueprints and comparison tool could have their uses in recruitment, career development, training opportunity identification, education and improving the profession’s equitability.
The levels of subjectivity in the project at this stage are high but this can be remedied with peer review and expansion of the project nationally with collaborative efforts made to score jobs and grow the data set.
Resources developed in the project can be viewed at this Padlet:SimtechJDs
This project was made possible by funding for the position of Simulation Technician Lead provided to UCL Partners by NHSE London. If you wish to have a copy of the full report please email: eligumblesim@gmail.com