Thank you, Ms. Chair.
Good morning, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on the committee's study on HHR.
The Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science, or CSMLS, is the national certifying body for medical laboratory technologists and medical laboratory assistants. It is also a voluntary, not-for-profit society that represents 14,000 medical laboratory professionals who work in Canada and around the globe. You may be surprised to hear that our profession is the third-largest health care profession in Canada, and approximately 85% of physician decisions are based on medical laboratory test results.
Canada is presently facing a nationwide shortage of medical laboratory technologists. Our organization predicts that by 2016, half of our MLTs will be eligible to retire. Since 1998, we have been alerting decision-makers that the number of seats in medical laboratory technology education programs is not sufficient to produce enough new graduates to replace those who are leaving the workforce. The domestic supply is simply too low.
Since 2000, governments have taken great steps to address the shortages by opening new MLT education programs and increasing capacity in others. This is a positive development; however, we are still more than 120 seats short annually.
But there is a bigger problem. Funding for programs has been provided for the classroom portion, but not for the clinical training piece. As with most health professions, clinical training is a vital component of medical laboratory science education. Completion of a clinical placement is mandated by the accreditation body, and students cannot graduate from their programs without completing a clinical placement.
In 2004, in partnership with Health Canada, we completed a research study, Clinical Placements for Canadian Medical Laboratory Technologists: Costs, Benefits, and Alternatives. The report revealed several issues that if not addressed will compromise the ability of education institutions to deliver the clinical component of their programs in the future. Most importantly, there is inadequate funding for the clinical education, staffing shortages at the clinical sites negatively impact their ability to allocate resources to student training, and there is very little research on best practices in clinical education.
But we're not alone. Other health care professions are facing exactly the same problem. The pan-Canadian HHR plan explicitly recognizes the importance of clinical education and sets a specific goal of increasing access to clinical training and clinical education.
So where are we today? We're in a situation now where clinical sites, primarily hospital labs, are refusing to accept students because of staffing shortages. It's becoming a very vicious cycle: they can't take students because they're too busy due to staffing shortages, and they're short of staff because there are not enough students supplying the labour market. We have to break this cycle soon.
This brings me to the issue of the internationally educated medical laboratory technologists. We recognize and applaud the federal government for its continued work to accelerate and expand the assessment of internationally trained health professionals, but more needs to be done. As the shortage continues to grow, we are consistently receiving about 600 self-identified technologists through immigration annually. But practice varies significantly across the globe, and it is a requirement that all practitioners in Canada meet the rigorous entry-to-practice standards to provide excellent patient safety. A system that allows for additional training and practice in the Canadian context that is accessible, affordable, and reliable is imperative.
“Bridging programs for internationally educated medical laboratory technologists: a business case” is a project that we recently completed study on. It concludes that bridging programs significantly shorten the time in which internationally trained technologists become certified and start working in the Canadian workplace. They also decrease their financial hardships.
We conduct prior learning assessment and credential evaluation every year for about 300 medical technologists, and about 90% of them do not meet the standards required in Canada. Furthermore, the failure rate on the national exam is well below the Canadian average. So it is absolutely imperative that the government invest in bridging programs for the internationally trained and make some provisions to fund clinical training spots.
In conclusion, we strongly recommend long-term, sustainable investments be made to support on-site clinical education. We need dedicated full-time preceptors in our labs who can devote the necessary time and attention to students and the internationally trained. We further recommend long-term and sustainable funding for bridging programs to facilitate quicker entry into the workplace. Strong investments today will help ease the future impact of the shortages.
Thank you for your time and attention.