How we made the quality and quantity of applicants soar - American Red Cross' Missouri-Illinois Regional Blood Services

Medical Laboratory Observer, Feb, 1992 by Judith A. Surber

A Red Cross blood center attacked the personnel shortage head-on to increase its share of qualified employees.

In 1990 employees at various levels in our laboratory decided to solve our common problem: recruiting technically qualified employees from a shrinking pool of applicants. We realized that it was no longer feasible to rely on the human resources office for all technical recruiting. Laboratorians speak to laboratorians better than anyone. We were determined to speak out ourselves.

Some colleagues and I--MTs, MLTs, and members of the blood products manufacturing staff--formed a work group to study both short staffing and technical recruitment. We developed an internal self-action plan (Figure 1) that called for presenting our facility as a desirable future workplace for student MTs and MLTs. It is lamentable but true that blood centers don't have the reputation they deserve as a good place for analytical laboratorians to work.

Our first step was to think about our operations and the environment that supplies our applicant pool. We asked ourselves three questions:

[paragraph] What are we? As a large regional blood service, our facility provides unique technical opportunities and resources. Much of our work is not strictly in blood banking but in serology, hematology, and clinical chemistry.

[paragraph] What can we offer? We have a diversified, highly qualified management staff, a knowledgeable reference laboratory staff, and an education-oriented medical staff. We provide excellent hands-on clinical education.

[paragraph] What do we want from our technical staff? Our entire staff must have considerable expertise. We wrote new job descriptions that clearly delineated what was expected of both MTs and MLTs. As a result, we constructed new rating and salary scales for the technical staff.

* Our environment. To determine the size of our recruitment pool, we surveyed nearby schools. In May 1990 and September 1991 we contacted all MT and MLT training centers in the St. Louis bi-state area, which includes portions of Illinois as well as the surrounding region in Missouri. We asked four college and university programs and three based at hospitals for current and projected numbers of graduates. The four four-year MT programs, which grant B.S. degrees, anticipated 29 graduates in 1990, 27 in 1991, and 24 in 1992. The three programs that award a two-year Associate of Science (A.S.) degree to MLTs expected to graduate 23 students in 1990, 21 in 1991, and 32 in 1992. In September 1991, 40 students began MLT studies; we won't know until May 1993 how many will complete the program.

Armed with this information, we sought strong liaisons with the seven local educational programs.

* Back to school. Many of our doctors and medical technologists serve as instructors and lecturers in MT and MLT programs. As the clinical chemistry instructor at a junior college, I have brought in other supervisors from my laboratories to tutor and teach remedial subjects in various clinical specialties. Bringing students into the lab is another way to increase the visibility of laboratory science.

* Lab visits. One goal of our work group is for all MT and MLT students in the schools identified to visit our blood center during their clinical training. We started this program in 1990 by offering the schools a "package" consisting of one day of lectures, half a day of donor site phlebotomy, and another half day of blood component preparation. We provided this opportunity three times during the school year so that all the students could fit the sessions into their tight schedules. Forty-three students attended, including all student technologists and technicians in their final year of study. The package attracted 40 students in 1991.

We developed a clinical rotation in the reference laboratory that enabled several MT and MLT students to work in-house for extended periods. A blood bank reference lab provides a unique opportunity to solve problems seldom addressed in hospitals--rare and multiple antibody identification, for example. We established several student technologist or technician positions in the donor-testing labs. Our technologists have enjoyed working with interns because it provides a chance to advance the profession while honing our skills.

To improve long-term recruitment, our MTs joined with colleagues from other institutions, including professors of clinical laboratory science at several schools, to form a speakers' bureau. The dual goal was to pique the interest of high school science classes and to attract people to the St. Louis Science Center and Planetarium for exhibits during National Medical Laboratory Week held every April.

Our MTs and their colleagues sought and received financial aid and support to establish a permanent medical technology exhibit at the science center. Among those donating funds and assistance were the Missouri Society for Medical Technology; laboratory personnel in the area, who expected the plan to benefit every lab; and vendors. The exhibit replaces and was inspired by a smaller temporary one previously described in MLO.[1] The permanent display is expected to open this year. An estimated two million people will be exposed to the laboratory profession each year through the exhibit and the speakers' bureau.