Expert advice for NHS employers recruiting Consultant Clinical Scientists (Audiology)
Ensure safe, effective appointments to senior scientific leadership roles with support from experienced Consultant Clinical Scientists
Strengthening scientific leadership in Audiology
Audiology sits within the NHS healthcare science workforce, where Consultant Clinical Scientists (CCS) play a critical leadership role in service quality, safety, and innovation.
Recent national scrutiny of audiology services has reinforced the importance of strong scientific leadership at Head of Service level to deliver sustainable, high-quality care. The Department of Health and Social Care-commissioned Kingdon Review (DHCS – England) 1 highlighted the need for a range of measures at a national level to ultimately improve the quality and assurance of services offered to patients. It is recognised that effective senior scientific leadership, at head of service level, is a key requirement to lead that improvement, sustaining high quality and assured delivery of Audiology into the future.
Healthcare scientists should have strong scientific leadership within NHS Trusts in the form of qualified and registered Consultant Clinical Scientists to oversee service delivery…
The value of Consultant Clinical Scientists in Audiology
Consultant Clinical Scientists (Audiology) contribute to the NHS Workforce and Clinical Service delivery where they provide:
- Consultant Clinical Scientists provide advanced clinical scientific expertise and interpretation of clinical data to other NHS professionals, and directly to patients. Working as an integral member of the clinical team, contributing directly to the development and delivery of patient management pathways in Audiology.
- Responsibility for individual patient care including that delivered by others within the Audiological services that they lead, providing expert assurance to the employing organisation for the assessment, diagnosis and management of cases referred to the service.
- Delivery of high-level clinical advice and expert care in the management of complex clinical cases involving hearing and hearing related conditions.
- CCS provide clinical scientific responsibilities at a level of accountability equivalent to that of consultant medical staff; providing high value Audiology services that require a significant breadth of clinical, technical, and scientific knowledge and expertise.
- They also offer accountability for clinical scientific advice and delivering interventions directly to patients to improve patient management and outcomes.
- Local, regional, and national strategic leadership of Audiology and contributing collectively across clinical scientific services.
- Promotion and lead for clinical governance, quality, and safety, advocating, and implementing accreditation and professional regulation.
- Support for workforce modernisation through the development of balanced multi professional working through role development of clinical scientific staff in Audiology.
- A contribution to strategic service redesign, leading the introduction of new technologies, diagnostics, and innovations (either technological or non-technological) in a safe and measured manner through research, innovation, and quality service improvement.
- Essential links between the NHS, academia and industry, facilitating, and leading on opportunities for NHS service transformation in Audiology.
- Advice to organisations to assure the safe and effective use of health technologies, including compliance with statutory obligations relevant to Audiology.
- Lead translation of cutting-edge scientific research and education, bringing strategic direction and innovation into clinical practice in Audiology.
- Delivery of care in line with statutory duties.
- Teaching, training, and professional leadership of Audiology clinical professionals, trainees and others at local/regional/national/international level within the NHS and in partnership with academia.
- Promotion and delivery of evidence-based practise through evaluation of existing knowledge but, where sufficient evidence does not exist, deciding best management on an individual patient basis.
- Influential advocacy for people living with hearing loss and related conditions.
Why expert recruitment advice is essential
Recruiting to CCS roles requires:
- Understanding of higher specialist registration standards
- Knowledge of national guidance and job profiles
- Insight into the true scope of consultant-level practice
The contribution of professional bodies includes offering expert external recruitment advice to individual employers on recruitment of CCS in the respective healthcare science disciplines.
Such assurance of capabilities of individuals at this level needs to be underpinned with reference to qualifications, training, higher level registration (AHCS, Higher Specialist Scientist Register2) and supplementary guidance from national bodies3. Achieving good recruitment outcomes requires a close understanding of these elements combined with expert level knowledge of Audiology to assure the safe appointment to senior scientific leadership at this level. This approach is in alignment with long established recruitment advisory schemes for medical consultant appointments, offered to employers by the medical royal colleges.
Without this expertise:
- Appointments may not meet required standards
- Organisations may not fully utilise the CCS role
- Service improvement opportunities may be lost
Recruitment advice offered by the BAA
The British Academy of Audiology (BAA) offers NHS organisations access to external expert advice from experienced Consultant Clinical Scientists.
A panel of CCS acting as recruitment advisors has been appointed by the BAA. On request from employing organisations (health boards and trusts) individual recruitment advisors will offer advice relating to:
Development of job descriptions, job plans and recruitment materials. Aside from correctly selected generic healthcare science job profiles for job matching, nationally endorsed model job descriptions for CCS in Audiology are available to guide this process.
Participation in appointment panels – their primary role will be to advise on which candidates could undertake the duties of the post satisfactorily and secondarily to advise on which one of those individuals considered suitable would be the best candidate for the post. Participation would normally be via MS Teams.
Providing advice on the development needs of individuals appointed to posts, including devising job plans with reference to national guidance.
In the first instance the scheme will be limited to CCS posts, reflecting available capacity to offer advice and priority towards senior scientific leadership.
How to access the service
Email the BAA admin team to request support.
A designated Consultant Clinical Scientist advisor is assigned.
Tailored advice provided throughout the recruitment process.
Advisor joins appointment panel if requested (typically via MS Teams).
Advice is suitable when recruiting where a CCS post becomes vacant. Additionally there is opportunity through this scheme to recruit to new CCS post, eg when recruiting to any head of service post, including those posts historically not held by a CCS. This may be reinforced by national communications from the respective UK health agencies promoting appointment of CCS to heads of service positions as routine. For this and other reasons, it is important to seek advice early in the recruitment process when job descriptions are being devised, rather than waiting until convening an interview panel.
Although the service is devised primarily for Consultant Clinical Scientist posts, it will be open for senior scientific leadership posts at sub-consultant level, where there exists or intention exists to access more senior professional leadership from a Consultant Clinical Scientist, e.g., through a network arrangement between health organisations.
When should you seek advice?
Engage with BAA as early as possible, ideally when:
- Designing a new CCS role
- Revising a Head of Service post
- A CCS vacancy arises
Early engagement ensures:
- Accurate role design
- Strong candidate attraction
- Robust appointment decisions
Who this service is for
- NHS Trusts and Health Boards
- Organisations recruiting to:
- Consultant Clinical Scientist posts
- Head of Audiology services
- Senior scientific leadership roles
(Initial focus is on CCS posts due to capacity and priority)
Request recruitment advice
To request support or discuss your recruitment needs:
Contact the BAA team: admin@baaudiology.org or call 01625 290046
Links and References:
- Independent report: Kingdon review of children’s hearing services: final report 10 November 2025, Department of Health and Social Care, England. UK-Gov: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/kingdon-review-of-childrens-hearing-services-final-report/kingdon-review-of-childrens-hearing-services-final-report
- Academy of Healthcare Sciences – information on higher registration, to enable individuals to practise at Consultant Healthcare Scientist level:https://ahcs.ac.uk/registration/psa-accredited-register/higher-specialist-scientist-register/about-the-register/https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/kingdon-review-of-childrens-hearing-services-final-report
- Consultant Clinical Scientists in NHS Wales: Information and guidance on the role, recruitment, training and development of Consultant Clinical Scientists in Wales, May 2022. Healthcare Science Cymru: heiw.nhs.wales/files/consultant-clinical-scientist-recommendations-englishpdf/
Career levels in Healthcare Science: https://ahcs.ac.uk/equivalence/career-framework-for-healthcare-scientists/
Audiology Career Pathway in Wales: https://heiw.nhs.wales/files/audiology-career-pathway-pdf/