"Our education is obsolete": or is it overblown?

[rustled]

Lab assistant rattled as IH drops post-secondary requirement for similar role
Amid a historic labour shortage, Interior Health will no longer require post-secondary education for workers whose primary role is to draw blood from patients, provoking an uproar from trained lab assistants.

SNIP

Interior Health says there is an urgent need for lab staff across the country, and as a result, pursued “an innovative solution” to train phlebotomists on the job.

“Following a successful initial cohort and extensive evaluation, a second intake is underway,” IH said. https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/3 ... milar-role

A practical solution that seems to be working for us!

However, this solution is not what the lab assistants who have already paid for a more expensive training program want to see:

The lab assistant, however, says the health authority is just lowering hiring standards rather than improving working conditions and wages.

With relatively low wages compared to the rest of the healthcare sector, and a significant amount of abuse hurled at them during the pandemic, the lab assistant says a staff shortage is inevitable.

The lab assistant does not like the practical solution to the problem, even though the practical solution is working.

The lab assistant wants the government to instead put more public resources toward more expensive, more time-consuming solutions that will benefit current lab assistants at the expense of everyone else, and may not address the problem as effectively as the practical solution already being applied.

IMO, this is a snapshot of how our healthcare system has become unsustainable.

[Catsumi]

The lab assistant (not to be confused with lab technologist) is vital in collecting blood samples, observing proper protocols for labelling, patient identification, and proper handling of the specimens until delivered to lab techs for analysis.

I do understand his/her complaint about the fast tracking of new phlebotomists with respect to the time and money invested in his/her training, and probably both will end up on the same pay scale.

Yes, times are changing and am pretty sure we all agree that fast tracking is a good answer to the labour shortages.

To put this into perspective, what if nurse aids who haven’t gone through all the rigorous training and examinations were paid the same as RNs? (they are not allowed at present to perform all the duties of an RN, same as an RN isn’t allowed to diagnose patient ills as a Doctor can]. There would be an outcry that could be heard even by the deaf.

The medical community is a hierarchy, much like the Army, Navy and Airforce….and all in it, protect their turf.

[rustled]

Turf's part of it. So is the education investment.

Part of her complaint was that the pay isn't enough to convince more people to do what she trained to do - no doubt in part because she paid $X for X years of training. We have to ask, have we inflated the training required for the job she's doing, or was all of it necessary?

Next question would be, how much of her job genuinely required that amount of training? Could part of that be done by someone with less training, freeing her up to do more of what required a greater amount of training?

Seems to me if we're looking at better use of our resources, we probably need to look at whether or not a good portion of what she's paid to do can, in fact, be done by someone with less of an investment in training. (Similar to deploying LPNs to do the work that can be done by an LPN instead of an RN. Or deploying RNs to do the work that can by done by an RN instead of a doctor.)

We know healthcare is struggling, too few people for the jobs. Making better use of our resources, getting folk trained to the positions more quickly, removing roadblocks for those who want an entry-level position - it's all part of the solution.

If we want to attract anyone to the job, it has to pay enough to attract them. Does that mean bumps for everyone else? We didn't do this when minimum wage went up - there was no automatic bump for all other employees, so people with a few years of experience were in some cases making only a few cents more than new employees make. It's a problem!