V. Lindler, MA, Susan A. Chapman, PhD, RN, and Lorraine Y Woo, BS. Center for the Health Professions, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California Street, Suite 410, San Francisco, CA 94118, 415-502-7870, lindler@itsa.ucsf.edu

Since the late 1990s, American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) vacancy data have substantiated widespread anecdotal reports of shortages of clinical laboratory science workers. In 2002, vacancy rates for ASCP-certified MT/CLSs ranged from about 6% in the Far West to about 10% in the Southwest. This study, which involves a unique collaboration between our health workforce research organization and the ASCP, broadly addresses issues of supply and demand for clinical laboratory scientists and several other categories of clinical laboratory workers. Formal interviews with 31 key figures in the field of clinical laboratory science and an informal, internet-based survey of 39 university-based hospital laboratory managers reveal that laboratory administrators have developed and implemented strategies to keep their laboratories functioning in spite of the ongoing strain of being understaffed. Common strategies include: hiring more technician-level employees; hiring and training more workers with BS degrees; cross-training of staff; collaborating with educational institutions to recruit into the field and reopen closed programs; offering clinical rotations or increasing the number of clinical rotations they offer; sign-on and retention bonuses, tuition reimbursement, salary increases; providing more opportunities for upward mobility of employees; and upgrading their laboratory technology, including more use of automation where appropriate. Certain of these strategies, such as sign-on bonuses, are more likely to increase competition for workers without increasing the size or quality of the workforce. Others are more likely to encourage the growth of a qualified and adequately sized clinical laboratory workforce, and thus are preferred from a policy standpoint.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe strategies for addressing shortages of clinical laboratory science workers.
• Identify which strategies are most likely to build a strong clinical laboratory workforce, rather than exacerbate competition for workers from a limited pool of labor or decrease the quality of the clinical laboratory workforce.
• Discuss difficulties of implementing the preferred strategies, and methods for minimizing these difficulties.

Keywords: Associated Health Professionals, Clinical Lab Services

Related Web page: futurehealth.ucsf.edu/alliedhealth.html

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.