Difficulties associated with access to training and clinical support for Reporting Radiographers – A narrative evidence synthesis

A survey of the NHS reporting radiographer workforce in England

“…[57] Further expansion of the radiographer reporting workforce is needed to sustain the skills mix of imaging services [26] through financial investment [57] and educational support through the rollout of national training academies [42][43][44] and imaging academies [58] to meet NHSE regional needs and support traditional university educational models, to accelerate scaling up the reporting radiographer workforce to enable geographical equity in the distribution of reporters to meet reporting demands and reduce the inequality of development opportunities by some regions not providing all imaging modality reporting education. [50,51,59] Additionally, the potential through academics to increase advanced practice reporting training opportunities would promote job retention and satisfaction [26] amongst radiographers to reduce workforce attrition. [60] It is recommended that future research is needed to explore the patient scope of practice (patient referral, patient age, or any anatomical or examination restrictions, and amount of reporting sessions a week [45,[47][48][49]61] radiographers complete to gain a wide perspective of the national workforce.…”

“…It is recognised that the national population of NHSE diagnostic radiographers annually fluctuates. Workforce figures change rapidly and can be potential sources of bias and error, such as over or under-estimating subsample data (recruitment, [13] attrition, [59,62,63] retirement [13], etc. ), as do trainee numbers due to several variables [59] (failing to start training, interruption to studies [64], failing assessments, qualifying but not gaining employment to report [64], qualifying but not seeking a reporting role, etc.).…”

“…Workforce figures change rapidly and can be potential sources of bias and error, such as over or under-estimating subsample data (recruitment, [13] attrition, [59,62,63] retirement [13], etc. ), as do trainee numbers due to several variables [59] (failing to start training, interruption to studies [64], failing assessments, qualifying but not gaining employment to report [64], qualifying but not seeking a reporting role, etc.). Qualified reporting radiographers may have left reporting positions internally or externally from their NHSE Trusts; as such, the survey was a snapshot of data at the time of data collection.…”