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Spread the Word: A Medical Technology Student’s Perspective

A Student's POV: The Merger

Published August 25, 2009 5:23 PM by Tiffany Landis
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While I was in Chicago at the ASCLS National Meeting, it was announced the NCA and ASCP BOR were to merge to create BOC. I know there was some that were apprehensive about this merger.

In my opinion, the merger gives more recognition to the laboratory and will help unite the profession. This was what our profession needed to help aid in giving laboratory professionals a voice and a sense of unity. This also gives practitioners control of the profession by allowing practitioners to write the test questions.

Some may say this field has an identity crisis because so many people were either going by medical technologists or clinical laboratory scientists. With this merge,r we get a new name and I think it is fitting--medical laboratory scientists. I know when I saw medical technology written somewhere, I automatically thought of all the instruments in the lab. The new name brings new meaning to the people behind the lab work. I'm excited to see the outcome of the merger.

posted by Tiffany Landis
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I am also so psyched about our new name that I'm jumping the gun and already using the new MLS(ASCP) designation even though it is not mid-October yet - and my hospital ID badge reads "Clinical Lab Technologist." :D

I choose to be optimistic that things WILL get better in the future as a result of the upcoming changes, but I understand that many colleagues of ours do not share our beliefs.  Just read how many of them wrote on Glen's blog pertaining to this topic about how we "will still be under the thumbs of MDs" due to ASCP's "hostile takeover" that "did away with NCA." I can't blame them for feeling that nothing will actually change since we have been underrecognized and underpaid for an EXTREMELY long time.

Some older colleagues also feel that the ASCP/NCA merger unfairly favors more recently certified professionals over those who became certified MT(HEW) by the US government's Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. (When the Department of Education was established in 1979, this department received its current name, the Department of Health and Human Services.) AMT (American Medical Technologists) is also not involved in this merger, so only time will tell exactly how much the merger will decrease "alphabet soup" confusion and increase recognition for us.

A friend of mine from church mentioned that professions tend to move upward in recognition (and PAY!) when a bachelor's degree (rather than an associate's degree) is established as the absolute minimum requirement for certification and employment.  Hopefully that will be one of the next steps for medical laboratory science in the very near future.
Stephanie Mathis, MLS(ASCP), Generalist - Medical Laboratory Scientist, Danville Regional Medical Center August 27, 2009 2:22 PM
Danville VA

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