A house divided...

From:Vinnie Della Speranza

Whew. Sure has been an exciting day on Histonet.

Enough has been said to probably get most of us fired up and I suspect that others like myself decided to stay out of the fray.
One thing is clear. We remain a polarized group. The "Learning by Doing is Better" camp vs the "I Worked Hard for that Piece of Paper" camp.
Regardless of which position you hold, the reality is that this polarization continues to hold this discipline back.
Imagine what we could achieve as a profession  with this kind of passion if we were all committed to pulling on the oars in the same direction?

I am a college educated Medical Technologist who had the good sense early on in my career to go into Histology, a decision I never regretted. I too have a few of those fancy papers decorating my wall so I think that I understand both sides of this issue.  My histology training was largely on the job.

The Med Techs have made more progress in achieving a certain professional (eeek, there's that word again) stature in part because of greater cohesion and an acceptance of the reality that its practitioners must meet a set eduational standards in order to qualify, something that occurred long before being mandated by CLIA 88.

I fear that until we are of one mind and accept that future practitioners must have college preparation AND sound experience, our discipline will likely keep spinning its wheels. We will also continue to become unnerved by the diversity of views about professionalism and suffer low professional esteem (The Rodney Dangerfield syndrome - We Don't get no respect)

First we need to respect one another. I do hope that we can return tomorrow with cooler heads and I hope that today may serve as food for thought. We are fortunate to represent an exciting and challenging discipline. Let's work together to move in a direction that will make everyone proud to go to work each day.





Vinnie Della Speranza
Manager for Anatomic Pathology Services
Medical University of South Carolina
165 Ashley Avenue  Suite 309
Charleston, SC 29425
Ph: 843-792-6353
fax: 843-792-8974





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