18 The Institute Spectrum August 2010 Members occasionally ask the question, “but what does the AIR do for us, the members?” In effect what they are saying is “What do we get for our money”. A good question and one that we will continue to address in the Annual Report and through regular reports, such as this. We thought it would be a good idea to report on the current projects under way through the activities of the AIR. In doing so, we would like to thank those many members who hold positions on the various panels and boards of the Institute and who give their voluntary time so willingly and generously. National Registration and National Accreditation are two very significant projects currently demanding attention from the Board and key staff members. This focus reflects the introduc- tion of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act 2009 into effect for the initial 10 professions on 1st July this year. Medical radiation practitioners will be registered nation- ally from 1st July 2012 and there is much to do in preparation for this event. While the Board of the AIR fully supports the introduction of National Registration, the devil is in the detail. Specifically, we are concerned about the manner in which the current national accreditation of the undergraduate diag- nostic, therapy and nuclear medicine in universities, carried out by the AIR through the PAEB for the first two modalities and the ANZSNM for nuclear medicine, will evolve under the new arrangements. The legislation makes it clear that the profession may no longer be the “owning” body for this activity. For the current 10 professions captured under National Registration, this was not a problem since they had established an accredit- ing agency, governed by a Board of Directors which was drawn equally from the profession, the academic institutions and the registration boards. However, currently, because not all of the states and territo- ries have a registration board, the professions in medical radia- tion are in the situation of working with the emerging National Board to incorporate their participation into the national proc- ess, which the profession has run, in our case for the past 59 years. Working to avoid conflicts of interest and maintain the transparency and the standards which we have developed, we do not want to throw away the good work of the past, or let the standards of the profession, of which we are justly proud, be captured by various interest groups. For a national professional body we must ensure that all views are heard and that the several pathways into professional knowledge and practice, so long as they lead to expert practitioners capable of sound professional judgement, are supported and encouraged. As a part of this work the Board has reinstated the meetings of the Heads of Discipline from the various tertiary educational institutes teaching medical radiation. These meetings will occur regularly from now on with support from the AIR to facilitate the needs of this important group. The Board has recognised that the basis for the profes- sional standards are the Competency Based Standards. These are undergoing a comprehensive review and in the second half of this year there will be widespread consultation on the revised standards. We hope that many of you will be willing to attend meetings and take the opportunity to respond. This also has a bearing on another major initiative, which is the development of Advanced Practice. The Panel has had several meetings and the next phase of this initiative is also underway. We should be seeing some very interesting discussions and outcomes from this towards the later part of the year. When we consider this topic, invariably the questions arises about what it might mean to be a Practitioner Assistant. The Board has already provided a clear answer to this which is on our website (http://www.air.asn.au/ news.php?date=2008-10) in which we state: “The AIR supports the concept of medical imaging assistants, but only for safe and non-radiographic tasks, and always in the immediate physical presence of a fully qualified graduate radiographer.” However, the Board recognises that there is more work to be done in defin- ing the acceptable activities and professional standards not only for practitioner assistants but also limited licence operators. In another sphere, the AIR has called for tenders to provide a post graduate mammography course and this is currently in review. The review of the Professional Development Year is in its final iteration and there have been a number of responses to the final call for comment. This will be incorporated into the end of year delivery of the CBS Review. The Board has also received a review of the Continuing Professional Development Programme in which we are trying to make the opportunity to complete CPD more multi dimensional and at the same time administratively simple. The new IT systems and database will see significant change for members in this area. There has also been a major study into the value of social networking and the implications of this, which is presently before the Board for consideration and will be reported back to the membership. A further major development, which is ready for release and use and has immediate relevance to the CPD topic is that of E-Learning. Members who attended the CSM Conference last year may well remember the CT quiz displayed on the AIR stand. This will also be available for members as an adjunct to the E-Learning project. It has been an interesting challenge deal- ing with the technology necessary to provide access to all our members across the country. There has been much done to look at the standards of prac- tice necessary for a medical radiation professional to gain entry into Australia. The Board has approved a revision of the English Language Standards necessary so that all overseas applicants Mid year report on current AIR projects David Collier Chief Executive