Please excuse some of my mispelled words in this letter, I forgot to
proofread and edit before sending.
Marsha

On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 05:33:10 -0500 Marsha R Price 
writes:
> 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
>