Agenda for change - Photographer/Screener pay banding

Can anyone tell me if there was a follow on from the disscusion held at the 2008 conference on the regional variations of pay scale banding across the country. My team and I are all band 3, pre-screening, photographing, dilating, working solo in a mobile unit seeing 28 patients a day. does anyone out there do anything similar to this? It would be really interesting to get some comparisons.

i am with the same screening service, it would be great if anyone does do the same - or even less workload than us if we could somehow get a copy of your job description - it would be a great help to our campaign to re-band!

What you need to do is look at the A4C guidance for all jobs; I don't know a great deal about it, but find it hard to believe that the patient contact and level of responsibility that a lone screener has can only be considered a 3! I know that each role or part of a role is awarded 'points' and the total decides which banding the job is. Look for jobs advertised in other trusts for screeners and use those job descriptions?

thanks for your help, we will keep trying.

I'm a screener/photographer at an inner-city hospital seeing 25-40 patients 5 days a week.

We work in quite a deprived area and see many patients who are disabled and/or have mental illnesses. Occasionally we also screen in-patients.

Me and my colleagues are all Band 2

does your pay go up after completeing the city and guilds qualification? i have seen a few band 2 photographers that do go up after completion of qualification. Do you work alone or in pairs? do you do VA at time of screening?

We work in pairs (one pre-screening, one photographing) and usually swap at lucnhtime. We always take the VA at time of screening.

I've been told by a manager that we should all have the C&G anyway so it shouldn't effect our banding at all. Besides, starting the C&G certificate still looks a very long way off at the moment.

HUH screener may I suggest you look for similar jobs and get their job descriptions? Are you expected to triage the images at point of screening? This involves a level of understanding of grades of retinopathy and may be useful if you want to try to upgrade. I suggest you visit www.eyetalk.co.uk forum and register; there is more footfall than on this forum, and a thread or two on paybanding.

Yep, we triage every patient we photograph. Therefore we are also expected to have a decent enough knowledge of retinopathy/maculopathy and what the different grades mean.

Thanks for the info on that forum. Will check it out.

i have noticed that whenever a london retinal screener post comes up on the NHS jobsite it is band 2, but with the london waiting pay it works out as equivellant to band 3..... seems a bit cheeky to me, as i would have thought you should be band 3 with the london waiting....

i really hope you can get something sorted out, otherwise i personally would be looking for a different screening service and move!!!

You're exactly right!

Just seen a vacancy up in Doncaster with an identical JD to my own that's a Band 3.

The London weighting seems to be the reason why we're not on par with the rest of the country in terms of banding. This is an issue that really needs to be raised at the higher levels as it does not seem to be very fair.

Are there other job roles in the NHS that are on an unequal banding because of London Weighting/High Cost Living Allowance? Is it seen to be an accepted practice? Would be interesting to find out.

none that i have noticed! but i dont tend to look at jobs very often on there. i have no idea who you would need to speak to, but to start with you will need a job description that matches yours exactly for them to do anything about your pay. Which to be honest, will be nearly impossible as no one job description is the same! hence a loophole in the system for this 'agenda for change'!
keep trying, keep printing any similar job descriptions for your role, and just keep pushing. can your manager help you at all?