Assistant practitioner support requested
Published 21 September 2020
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During the pilot, assistant practitioners (APs) recorded whenever they contacted anyone during their clinic. The following breakdown details those contacts which were not administrative in nature.
Non-administrative contacts
There were 23 contacts (16% of total) made to a supervising radiographer regarding quality control checks of equipment, as some of the pilot sites had a local policy for these to be approved by a radiographic practitioner (RP) before the clinic could begin. This is not an activity that was completely new to the APs but they would normally do this alongside the RP.
APs made 14 contacts requesting details of previous mammography dates, which was 9.5% of all contacts. These requests would have also been raised by an RP if they had been running the clinic. This suggests that IT connectivity to the national breast screening system was not always reliable. However, this did not result in any eligible women not being screened but was important in identifying some women who could not be screened due to IR(ME)R regulations.
Only 35 reports (24%) were categorised as advice or supervision related to screening during the pilot.
AP discussions
Six of the advice or supervision discussions were between the APs themselves, demonstrating the peer supervision they gave each other. They consisted of:
- whether a repeat image was required and whether this needed approval (3)
- advice on imaging due to anatomy (1)
- agreeing how best to deal with challenges: mobility issues, language barriers and learning disabilities (2)
Radiographer advice requests
The reasons for the remaining 29 episodes of advice that were requested of a radiographer were:
- querying if a repeat image was needed (4)
- approval to screen women with stents, loop recorder or mechanical heart valve (4)
- querying if APs can sign attended not screened paperwork (2)
- querying or seeking approval for technical recall (4)
- advice on dealing with a busy clinic (2)
- advice on how to deal with a woman locked in a toilet (1)
- whether to continue to use equipment with slight issue (1)
- women were under follow-up care (3)
- approval to screen self-referrers (4)
- woman with hearing impairment or language difficulty (2)
- woman with recent screen (eligibility) (1)
- challenging anatomy (1)
Findings
Of all contacts made, 20% were for specific advice from RPs (not including discussions about rebooking women with implants or implanted medical devices) and resulted in only 1 woman not being able to be screened. This was due to not being able get a suitable position for imaging due to challenging anatomy.
These types of supervision calls amounted to advice being requested for only 0.2% of all women who attended.