Out-of-Work Med Tech Has Lost Hope, Questions Labor Shortage

My response to the Editor on Nov. 28, 2007:

I commend all of these lab groups in joining together to try to “recruit” people into the lab profession. There are only a few problems with their initiative:
1. money
2. marketing

Let me explain further. I have the same 4-year degree requirements as a nurse, pay a state license fee, provide documented continuing education, yet my paycheck is A LOT LESS than a nurse’s. A nurse provides direct patient care, true, but what would a hospital due as part of their emergency response team if the lab caught on fire? Someone once told me, “If it weren’t for the lab, doctors would have to guess,” (because the blood results that I aid to generate is used by the doctor to make a diagnosis of health or disease).

If the money was averaged out more equally and marketed fairly, for example, by placing billboards along the highway like the nursing profession does, then maybe the med tech schools would commence to fill up. This is where the hospitals that need med techs need to step up to the plate and advertise for potential business contracts regarding patient insurance groups because they employ the best medical laboratory team in the Mid South, for example.

This would have a domino effect for other hospitals to follow and would, therefore, make the public aware of our profession while providing business to that hospital. Market what the lab has always done, on a billboard, not only to increase sales contracts but also for the general public because word-of mouth is a waste of breathe. Special meetings and projects for only upper management to attend are a waste of resources because the information never filters down to the tech’s doing to work–except maybe during lab week once a year.

A lot of MT’s, including myself, have lost hope because what was promised 10 years ago as being a “work in progress,” with legislation in Congress to ASCP-BOR & NCA joining as one credentialing agency, to voicing Labs Are Vital are just great ideas that are never finished.

For the record, I am a Medical Technologist, Supervisor (ASCP), CLS (NCA), and I was laid off in June 2007 from a physician office as the Lab Manager because the office lab was dissolved. Since then, I have applied for over 84 jobs, with seven interviews, in the Memphis, TN metro area. Is there really a med tech crisis, or does the market want inexperienced, short-staffed, cheap labor, thanks in allotment to the newer POCT/CLIA-waived tests RN’s can now do?