Nurses, physical therapists, and others on the patient floor get a lot of visibility. No one is promoting the lab professions,” Lawrence says. “We need to publicize the laboratory professions more in general so they are known as one of the allied health professions. To alleviate this, the industry needs to increase its visibility, which can be a challenge since professionals are often tucked into a lab. As a result, postdoctoral and residency training programs also suffer from a lack of students. “CP is in the rotation to some degree, but when I ask students about their previous exposure, most say it’s been very little,” says Ann M Gronowski, PhD, associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, and associate medical director at affiliated Barnes-Jewish Hospital. They are just not very visible.Įven in medical school, clinical pathology (CP) does not get much attention. “But many students don’t know there are bachelor’s-level professionals in the laboratories performing tests,” Lawrence says. Most commonly, CLS-level professionals require a bachelor’s degree and CLTs require an associate’s degree. “Every NAACLS-approved program has prerequisite courses,” Steen says, noting that they are heavy in the sciences. The National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences (NAACLS) in Chicago currently lists 226 accredited CLS/MT programs and 200 CLT/MLT programs. Now, there are only about 200,” she says. “Back then, there were over 600 CLS programs. Claudia Steen, program director of the Yakima Regional CLS Program (Yakima, Wash), has been teaching for 28 years, and she worked in the field for about 10 years before that. If programs happen to have enough students interested, they often do not have the funds or hospital labs with which to properly train students. That lack of support is particularly evident in laboratory-educational programs. As a result, the industry lacks the students and funds needed to support the work. With a few exceptions, such as phlebotomists, patients don’t often see laboratory professionals-not even on television, where physicians are often the ones shown performing tests. Sciences are not emphasized as much as they once were in early education, and students gravitate toward the high-profile, high-paying industries, such as technology. Laboratory careers are sort of a hidden profession,” says Louann Lawrence, DrPH, head of the department of clinical laboratory sciences at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans (currently based in Baton Rouge).
0 kommentar(er)
