Future of the labs

 

UPCOMING EVENT | May 6 | A day to focus on the future of labs

The future of public-system medical labs will also be the focus of attention on May 6, as partners from many different horizons come together for a provincial-level day of reflection organized by the APTS. The theme of this focus day will be Moving forward for the future of our labs.

Our goal is to bring health and social service actors and partners together so that we can look at the problems facing medical labs, start thinking about them collectively, and find concrete solutions that will ensure the future of these services.

An overall vision leading to concrete solutions

The focus day is intended as a sequel to the APTS tour of Québec labs that took place from summer 2022 to summer 2023. The APTS believes we now need to bring actors from all horizons together to agree on innovative solutions for labs.

Representatives of APTS lab personnel will be joined by representatives of medical federations and associations, CEGEPs, groups representing service users, professional orders, unions, and other partners. Together, we will discuss issues such as the labour shortage, the impacts of centralization, and the accessibility of services provided to Quebecers. In order to think collectively about the future of lab services, we need to explore problems from every angle as we ask how to highlight the value of our professions, how to improve the organization of work, and how to reduce our administrative burden.

 

Looking back at the APTS tour of Québec laboratories

Over the past 18 months, the APTS has gone to meet members employed in public-system labs throughout Québec. Our goal was to ask them about the issues they face on a daily basis and to take stock of the overall situation in labs. Here are some of our major findings:

• Labs are able to function because their employees are deeply committed and have an expertise that is irreplaceable. But these employees are worried about the future of their profession: at this point, it’s proving difficult both to bring new employees into the public system, and to attract new students to CEGEP training programs.
• The labour shortage is putting a lot of pressure on people currently working in labs. The labs are understaffed, and employees are forced to shoulder excessive workloads in order to avoid multiple breaks in services.
• The centralization of labs established by the OPTILAB reform is making it more difficult for the public system to provide rapid access to high-quality local services.
• Bringing people with a variety of job titles into labs is causing problems in terms of recognizing the expertise of medical technologists and graduate medical laboratory technicians. This expertise needs to be more clearly acknowledged.

 

Past events

 

During National Medical Laboratory Week, we invited APTS members working in this crucial sector to post stories on social media with the hashtag #myexpertisematters, telling us how their expertise makes a difference to the people who benefit from their services.

See our social campaign on:

YouTube I Facebook I Instagram 

 

 

The APTS also presented a webinar on April 19, 2024, with the theme OPTILAB: The APTS in action for the future of our laboratories (in French).

Who’s invited?  This webinar is intended for lab personnel.

What’s it about? Participants will look back at the origins of the OPTILAB reform and the APTS’s ten years of mobilization to ward off the ministerial steamroller.