Tina Banner, Association Support Client Manager from Association Respiratory Technology & Physiology on ‘Supporting students to develop professional competencies in sandwich year and beyond for CPD.’ This recording is from our 2023 MiniBash community event which was hosted in Birmingham, England. Videos are for educational personnel only and require a live educational email to watch. You can read a small snippet of the video transcript below.
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So the ARTP. They are the association for respiratory technology and physiology, hence why we say ARTP. And they’re a collection of healthcare scientists who bring inspiration and quality into respiratory healthcare. They work closely with the Department of Health in formulating policy and strategic direction for the delivery of lung function and sleep services.
The ARTP work with partner organisations, some of those, you can see, to produce position papers, national guidelines, and standards for the good practice of respiratory measurement.
And the ARTP offers certificate certificates of competence for respiratory physiologists. And then practitioners of CPAP, spirometry, pulse oximetry and polygraphy, and blood gas sampling and analysis.
Some in the audience today may well have had one of these tests done if they’ve ever been to hospital for diagnosis for sleep apnea or COPD.
One of the certificates that we run is for a test called spirometry. And it’s a simple test used to help diagnose and monitor certain lung conditions by measuring how much air that you can breathe out in one force breath. Again, some of you may well have had this if you’ve had a diagnosis for asthma at your local GP Surgery.
The tests carried out using a device called barometer, which is a very small machine attached to a cable to a mouthpiece.
The patient blows into the mouthpiece, which then generates a test result. And the results can then be used to report on the condition of the lungs and diagnose condition.
There are spirometry practitioners based at every hospital and nearly every GP practice all throughout the UK.
At the moment, anyone can take a spirometry course and go on to start performing tests on and diagnosing patients, which obviously, if done wrong, can pose a risk of misdiagnosis, which we don’t want.
So the NHS have therefore outlined in their long-term plan, which is their ten-year plan, that spirometry should only be performed by practitioners who have been appropriately trained and assessed as competent in performing this promontory. And on reporting on the results, and this is where the ARTP come in.
So we formulated a series of exams that are designed to test practitioners in their knowledge and performance of spirometry.
This includes those that perform the test only and those who report on the results. And the aim is that all practitioner’s of spirometry will be certified and on a national register within the next few years.
Once a practitioner has passed their spirometry exam with the ARTP, they’re then granted a certificate, and added to the National Register, which is hosted by the Academy for Healthcare Science. And anyone can look at this register on the website and find a practitioner. The only route onto the register is through the ARTP.
So as part of this spirometry certificate, the candidate is expected to complete a portfolio, a multiple-choice questionnaire exam, and a practical osce exam, all within the space of 9 months. And once their deadline date is up, that’s it, access to the program is closed.
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