Sayeed,
 What you are saying is true, there are some techs who have not been
successful at passing the written part of the BOR, that  have superb
skills.

I think we are all in agreement on this :
1. The two year training program is a necessity, it is a great program
2. We need to add college courses to the 2 year ojt program to prepare
these individuals for the written exam.
3. We need to form more histo schools to help with this extreme shortage
and offer incentives to encourage people to become a histotech, like they
do the nurses.
4. I think 4 hours in the histo lab and 4 hours in the class room would
be good (Plus the students could help with the busy morning workload
while receiving their training)

I did not realize how serious the shortage was until I started
interviewing for a job recently. I decided to resign my supervisory job a
little over a year ago to obtain more college education. I then thought I
might try to work a little prn or part-time or even relocate if the
perfect job in the perfect place came up.

What I am witnessing out in the histo world is sad and I feel for all you
supervisors and Pathologists that are trying desperately to fill these
spots. I have had all kind of offers but none that I would uproot my
family over or that would benefit me whatsoever.

Have we stopped to ask why are these vacancies still there? I answered
that in the above paragraph, there are not enough attractive offers that
will motivate someone to relocate or even work prn etc.

For example, this one place I applied at was offering to pay RN's to go
to school to become an RN if they would agree to sign on with them for 1
year after the completion of the RN program. This particular hospital was
also desperately short on histotechs (I couldn't help but notice how
desperate they were because they practically grabbed hold of me and asked
if I could start right away like this moment, I was trying to politely
pry there arms off of me without making them breakdown in tears) and had
one of the few histology schools available in our country but were not
offering to pay histotechs to go to school nor were they offering
relocation fee, sign on bonus etc. The supervisor was nearly in tears and
said that she not only was finding it difficult to find histotechs but
IMPOSSIBLE.

I am seeing this particular scenario in the story I described above in
practically all states that I have interviewed in.
 
So, please tell me what is the answer to this particular problem in
histology? I know that I am apparently not the only one declining their
offers, or they would not have the need to interview me. 

I would love to hear some feed back on this.

Marsha Price


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