From the lab assistants that take samples to the laboratory technologists that analyze them, many of the workers who staff Canada’s labs are in short supply.
The impacts of that national shortage of lab workers are being felt in the Okanagan.
Last week Interior Health announced the permanent closure of a Vernon, B.C., lab that originally shut its doors due to staffing shortages, and in September the controversial hiring of phlebotomists to address the lab assistant shortage made headlines.
A national professional society points out there are currently dozens of vacancies in B.C.’s Interior alone.
“It means patient expectations and health-care providers’ expectations will have to change when it comes to a lab,” said Christine Nielsen CEO of the Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science.
“Something before that would have taken a day to turn around might take two days, three days, four days.”
However, Nielsen says there are a variety of things that can help address the challenges including investing more in helping foreign-trained workers get certified and/or licensed in Canada, expanding seats in training programs, increasing wages for lab assistants, and working to cut down on medically unnecessary testing.
Interior Health says it is working with the provincial ministry to tackle the issue from a variety of fronts.
That includes partnering with Alberta on a program for international students that is aimed at having the students eventually work in Interior Health starting as medical laboratory assistants and potentially moving to technologist positions once they are certified.
Joanne Isber, Interior Health’s corporate program director for IH pathology and laboratory medicine, said the province has also added additional seats in the medical laboratory technologist program, but that program is not currently offered in the Interior.
So Isber said IH is proposing a medical laboratory technologist program be established in the Interior to facilitate more Interior residents going into the field and working locally after graduation.
The health authority has also partnered with a non-profit organization in the Kootenays. The non-profit financially supports local students in that region to take the medical laboratory assistant program and then Interior Health gives the students a practicum.
Isber said the health authority is also hiring a second cohort of phlebotomists to help deal with the lab assistant shortage.
That program has been controversial as phlebotomists, who get training from the health authority, don’t require the same education as lab assistants.
Nielsen said Interior Health is not the only region moving to phlebotomists.
“That is someone hired right out of high school with on-the-job training, which is not the ideal situation, but it is currently happening because labs truly want to keep their doors open,” Nielsen said.
However, Isber defends the phlebotomist program, saying phlebotomists are focused on blood sample collection, while lab assistants have a larger scope of practice.
Overall, Isber feels the health authority’s efforts to reduce the shortage of lab workers locally are paying off.
She said vacancy rates across the region are going down slowly but surely, “which is a very good sign.”
However, looking at the shortage from a national protective, Nielsen is less optimistic about the short-term situation. She estimates Canada is around five years away from a well-staffed lab system.
But, Nielsen said, those professionals who are on the job are working diligently.
“There should be great faith in the lab testing system. Despite the fact that we are short workers … when your samples do come through, there is great care taken for every sample that comes through,” Nielsen said.
“We want to make sure that the data we give back to the family practitioner is accurate and reliable and that you know when you have a positive or negative result…. It just is going to take a little bit longer because we do not have enough people in the system to deal with the demand right now and we won’t probably for five years.”
— with files from Taya Fast
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