College Unveils New Lab For Lab Tech Program

Friday, April 04, 2008 06:17 PM

Lab Tech Sheila Scharf Lab Tech Support Staff.

Prince George, B.C. - The College of New Caledonia has officially opened its newest laboratory for its Medical Lab Tech Program at the Prince George Campus. College president John Bowman also announced more seats during the Friday afternoon media event.

“We began the program with only 18 seats this January, however, with the addition of six more seats will bring the total number of students to 24 by the end of January 2009,” Bowman said.

Northern Health Regional Director of Diagnostic Services Ken Winnig says the need for Medical Lab Technicians is worldwide. “The latest tech to be hired (at Northern Health) was recruited from the US,” Winnig says. He says “before that, we hired someone from Newfoundland and we even have an interview with a tech from Dubai.”

Medical Lab Tech student Jodie Hall says it’s a program she’s always wanted to take. “However, it’s challenging. It’s a lot of hard work with 3 to 4 hours of homework every night,” Hall said.

Prince George Omenica Liberal MLA John Rustad says the program at CNC is a good example of training ‘in the north for the north.’ “Medical laboratory technologists are an essential part of a health-care team,’ Rustad said.

Before the College offered the program, only a Vancouver-based college offered the two year program. The new lab features most of the equipment students are likely to encounter in their professional careers like centrifuges, blood gas analyzers and microtomes.

Many of the equipment used in the lab was donated by hospitals, labs and companies throughout BC and even from Alberta and Saskatchewan—worth a total of $340,000.

The future

“The Medical Radiography Technology program is next. We’re hoping to offer it by 2010,” said CNC President John Bowman. “The college has been collaborating with Northern Health and other partners to determine how to offer the program.”

“When we announced the creation of full care Cancer clinic for Northern BC, we saw the need to hire professionals for the facility,” Prince George Omenica John Rustad said.

“By working together we can save money as well,” Bowman said. “As you heard, had Northern Health had enough technicians, they could have saved the over $800,000 of relief work they had to pay for last year because they didn’t have the staff.”

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Posted on Friday, April 04, 2008 06:17 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: ammonra on April 4 2008 10:52 PM

Several years ago we used to take four students from Kamloops or BCIT for their practical experience year, and we had most of them stay in northern BC.

I find it interesting that they have been having trouble recruiting as they were cutting back working hours and laying people off not too long ago. Every warning about a coming shortage was ignored.

Posted by: ammonra on April 4 2008 10:54 PM

By the way, to Mr. Bowman, the name of the group is Medical Laboratory Technologist, not technician. A sore point.

Posted by: ammonra on April 4 2008 10:55 PM

Posted by: owl on April 5 2008 8:13 AM

"Northern Health Regional Director of Diagnostic Services Ken Winnig says the need for Medical Lab Technicians is worldwide"

From the article it sounds like Ken Winning is the one who used the term technicians.

I was flabbergastered to see that BC cut back on its MLT programmes from 20 or so years ago. It looks like only BCIT was left. 25 or so years ago CNC had the first year of the program and the students transferred to BCIT in the 2nd year.

Looks like Ontario still has 6 training locations, and Quebec 10.

Posted by: ammonra on April 5 2008 8:41 AM

I doubt it was Ken. He always uses the term "technologist", and the comment about what he said is not a quotation.

Incidentally, Ken Winnig himself is an example of a local trained technologist in the older program at PGRH. He then went on to get a degree to supplement his education and eventually became the Big Boss of the Regional Labs. He's also a thoroughly nice person.

Posted by: ammonra on April 5 2008 3:41 PM

The decline in Med Lab programs took place over a protracted time period. The program at CNC was not part of the official two year program but a university transfer year in sciences with a medical laboratory orientation component. You had to take it if you wanted to become a med lab tech in PG, but most students used the program for plain university transfer purposes.

Four med lab tech students were then sponsored by PGRH for Kamloops or BCIT and did their training there, returning to PGRH for the final year.

Initially the government cut funding to the programs and student intake was reduced. Kamloops had a harder time as it was smaller and eventually was cancelled. Later the program at BCIT was also cancelled. No lab tech training took place in the province at all for a few years. It is now being restarted.

Is it any wonder that we have a shortage of health care personnel with incompetent educational strategies like that? Lab techs, pathologists and the training programs all resisted as much as possible, but the money men rule, and they eventually succeeded in destroying a well functioning system.

My regret with the new program is that the opportunity was not taken to have the training linked to a BSc in Medical Laboratory Sciences. The profession has moved on since the older days with the university transfer, community college, practicum approach after high school graduation, and the new students may have a difficult time in future unless they already have relevant science degrees. Laboratory testing is considerably more complicated than it used to be - as the problems in Newfoundland indicate.