How Much Do You Make? Take the Salary Survey

What may also contribute to our lower salaries may be the fact that laboratorians aren't in the public spotlight nearly as much as nurses, PT's, PharmD's, etc..   When was the last time you saw a news story (in newspaper, TV, CNN, TIME, etc) about the decreasing numbers of laboratorians? Compound that with the fact that a majority of the public thinks that we only draw blood and that we can do this with a HS degree..  There just isnt the public support and push for Med Tech support.  

Ask someone on the street what an RN is and what they do, then and then ask them what a Medical Technologist is and what they do.   Many wont know the latter, including many of your own hospital administrators....

What would be ideal would be being able to take the results of the salary survey into your HR or lab admin department and use it (as you suggested) to collectively negotiate a higher salary across the board for the techs.  BUT in many areas where the hospital size is smaller and budgets may be tighter, it may be harder.  This can be just as true in the larger cities, but in the cities, a labor market value or general prevailing wage is often kept.

Another possible cause is one that was mentioned in another blog posting was that nurses, over the years, have come together as one large, united front to bring public this problem (wages, shortages and adequate staffing issues).  We, as laboratorians need one large unifying front to do the same for us as well.  Whether it takes a national organization or multiple small, local ones coming together to do so - every little bit helps.

I commend Matthew and ADVANCE for undertaking this salary survey. For a long time many other professions such as nursing and respiratory therap, but not clinical lab science, published salary surveys. These professions have been the beneficiary of steady salary increases as a result.

Although there are now regularl salary surveys for clinical lab science published by a variety of organizations (eg ASCP) and agencies (US Department of Labor) many practicing laboratorians still complain about depressed salaries. There are many reasons for this, but two very obvious ones are 1. minimal partcipation in such surveys and 2. not using survey data to negotiate salaries.

I read somewhere that the more disgruntled and are the ones who tend to respond to voluntary surveys such as these. Full partcipation is much more likley to provide more valid, valuable data, which interestingly, is likely show higher averages that can be  used to your advantage.

I urge everyone to participate!