Interior Health says it’s trying to support, not undermine, lab assistants with a new program that provides on-the-job training for new health care workers who draw blood. The health authority’s launch of a new ‘laboratory venipuncture’ post came under fire this week from a local trained medical laboratory assistant, who raised concerns that IH was quietly lowering recruitment standards for her profession. While a medical lab assistant requires post-secondary education, the phlebotomist role will only involve on-the-job training. Joanne Isber, IH’s pathology and laboratory medicine program director, tells Castanet that while the public job descriptions for a phlebotomist and a medical lab assistant look similar, they are not the same role. The phlebotomist’s work will be entirely focused on drawing blood from patients. A medical lab assistant, while also being able to draw blood, also works in “transfusion medicine, anatomic pathology, microbiology — we use those to support other lab processes and workflow,” Isber said. The new role of the phlebotomist is intended to take over the technical work of removing blood from the medical laboratory assistant’s plate to free him up for other tasks. The 12 weeks of on-the-job training for phlebotomy staff includes things like medical terminology and biology, said Isber, who noted they had medical supervision and the professional practice office involved in creating the program. The lab phlebotomist role lists a starting salary of $24.04, while a lab assistant starts at $25.31 an hour, which one lab assistant told Castanet made them feel like their training is “outdated.” Isber said she agrees with the idea that lab assistants are underpaid, but that’s out of their hands since wages are set by a collective bargaining agreement. “They really have to go through their union on this, because this is all part of collective bargaining,” Isber said. “We advocate for them. But I have no control over that.” The new phlebotomist position was created under the collective agreement “through the terms of the process and classification criteria,” he said. There is a national shortage of laboratory assistants in Canada, with almost all Internal Health facilities in desperate need of them. IH went so far as to offer a $10,000 signing bonus for lab staff in April. Isber said IH was “really struggling with outages” because of the shortage and the feedback they received from existing staff was “we need help”. “This was a good way to relieve some of that pressure for them,” he continued. We didn’t want to lose the lab assistants, because their workload was so great.” “I think it will be good to help sustainability in the future.” Isber also said they hope the phlebotomist position offers scaling opportunities for staff once they get in the door, and the health authority would be willing to sponsor post-secondary education for phlebotomists who want to become full lab assistants. “I would like to stress though that medical laboratory assistants (MLAs) are very important to us. We really need MLAs, they do a fantastic job. Their work is difficult. It’s challenging right now and we really appreciate everything we do. We want to take some of the pressure off them.” “I would encourage anyone out there who is thinking about roles in healthcare to take the workshop.” Unvaccinated laboratory personnel are seeking a return Rutland GP Dr Joshua Nordine, who has advocated for the re-employment of unvaccinated healthcare staff, says timely access to lab results is “a key factor in patient outcomes”. “Health care is failing and we need to support more medical lab assistants, medical lab technologists and clerks. We need to support meaningful change and rehiring of any of those who have been laid off. The biggest risk to a person’s health is not having timely access in medical care, including efficient laboratory services’. “Putting up barriers to access to outpatient clinics puts patients’ lives at risk. When patients face excessive wait times at hourly labs or extra travel time when their local lab is closed, it creates even more problems,” he said, adding that there is no way to quantify the “bad outcomes” associated with delays in receiving lab results, “but the damage is obvious when the government is unable to provide basic laboratory services.” Terri Perepolkin, a lab technologist for 17 years at Vernon Jubilee Hospital before he was terminated for not being vaccinated, said the hospital lost at least five lab assistants or technologists because of the mandate. “I can agree that laboratory services were struggling before the pandemic, but know that IH has laid off a lot of staff who had many years of experience.” Perepolkin served as an HSA shop unionist at the hospital before he was let go and contacted Castanet after reading coverage of the new phlebotomy program. “IH needs to be accountable to its patients and bring back the skilled workers they wrongfully fired for making an informed medical decision,” Perepolkin continued. The vaccine mandate affecting health care personnel in BC was put into effect in October 2021 by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, resulting in 2,500 British Columbian health care workers—900 in the Home Health area—being terminated. It is not known how many of them were laboratory personnel. Less than 2 percent of BC health care staff were laid off because of the mandate. Dr. Henry said last week that the vaccine mandate remains in place for the foreseeable future, citing the possibility of an increase in cases in the winter.
