Professional Recognition is Essential for our Community: IPEM CEO Gill Collinson writes

I was interested to read the new Strategy published by the Science Council last week. The Strategy rightly places an emphasis on the importance of professional recognition.

At IPEM, we’ve spoken in the past about Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering being “the invisible workforce”. This has been an ongoing challenge and one that IPEM is working hard to address. It was good to see two of our members featured on the BBC programme “Surgeons: At the Edge of Life” recently. This sort of exposure is invaluable to professions that most members of the public have never heard of, let alone understand. Our members often tell us that the thing people find most surprising about their job is that it exists at all. Of course, when they think about the vital roles that our members play, it is obvious that someone has to do those jobs!

Of course, professional recognition is not just about the public knowing who we are, important as that is. It’s also about our colleagues, whether they work with MPCE professionals or not, being aware.

Gaining formal professional recognition is an excellent way to do this. In their Strategy, the Science Council talk about their Chartered Scientist scheme and this is something that IPEM actively supports. As a member, if you meet the criteria, IPEM will actively enable you to apply to gain CSci, at no additional cost to you other than the Science Council’s application fee. We also do this for our Engineers, through our partnership with the Engineering Council. Hopefully you’ll have seen our communications recently around Chartered Week, the first time we’ve run such a campaign, but one that we feel is very important. It was great to hear from members – and indeed our Director of Education and Professional Development, Katherine Bunting – talking about why Chartered status means so much to them. If you did miss them, take a look at the videos on our YouTube channel here.

IPEM itself also offers a number of ways to gain professional recognition. This could be through applying to become an IPEM Fellow (FIPEM) or entering for one of our various prizes or awards. You can find more information on our website.

Our members do an amazing job and IPEM will continue to shout about them. Please do help us to do so as well, by telling us about your innovations, successes or projects that we can promote!