National Medical Laboratory Week

With in-person gatherings restricted across the country for another year, we helped the medical laboratory community come together, while staying safely apart, to celebrate National Medical Laboratory Week and advocate for the profession with our biggest Celebration Toolkit ever, all branded to the much-loved Indigo Lab Coat.

During the week, we saw 18 landmarks across the country lit up in indigo, and political leaders spoke out for the lab. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau published a statement of support, and Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Health Patty Hajdu and many provincial leaders sent their own messages and proclamations to mark the week.

The community came together for a Lab Week photo with the virtual photobooth; nearly 300 medical lab professionals submitted their photos to the virtual gallery.

Thanks to member participation, CSMLS Lab Week social media posts were seen more than 500,000 times, and all Lab Week-related posts had a social reach of over 7.8 million users.

Championing the Lab

The Indigo Lab Coat continued its mission to raise awareness of the profession, now highlighting medical laboratory professionals as the “unsung heroes” of Canada’s pandemic response. In 2021, we partnered with Canadian icon Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser to create the Indigo Lab Coat of Honour, a lab coat covered in Wickenheiser’s praise for medical laboratory professionals micro printed in indigo text.

This coat was the centre of a brand-new element of the campaign: a live display of the Indigo Lab Coat of Honour.

The Indigo Lab Coat was on display at the height of the holiday shopping season, first at the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in London, Ontario, and then the Vaughan Mills Shopping Centre in Vaughan, Ontario.

Ten bus shelter ads, strategically placed in high-visibility areas and in regions surrounding hospitals in 5 major cities, are estimated to have been viewed 6.9 million times.

We published a new web video that was shared across the CSMLS social media channels and on YouTube. Together, the social media campaign was viewed more than 400,000 times.

 

 

Lobby Week

For over a decade, CSMLS has been organizing Lobby Day, a one-day government relations blitz where volunteer members and staff meet face-to-face with Members of Parliament on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. These meetings have proved incredibly effective, establishing CSMLS as a source of information regarding laboratory and health care matters.

In May 2021, we reimagined Lobby Day, creating a week-long virtual event in which 13 CSMLS volunteers and staff held meetings with 38 government officials. Our lobby team iterated our key concerns, all related to the increased demand for laboratory testing and the shortage of medical laboratory technologists. The good news about a pandemic? They all understand the critical role you play in healthcare now, more than ever.

We outlined the multi-pronged approach we champion to addressing impending shortages:

• Increasing the supply of new medical laboratory professionals by expanding domestic educational programs
• Increasing sustainable funding for better integration of internationally educated MLTs into the Canadian workforce
• Better serving rural and remote communities via financial incentives and student loan relief for MLPs, similar to those offered to other health care professionals
• Investing in laboratory infrastructure to meet both current and future needs, ideally through a partnership between Federal and Provincial governments

We capitalized on the relationships we built during Lobby Week and followed up on key action points throughout the year. Lobbying is a long-term effort, and Lobby Week proved a solid investment in our advocacy strategy.

After watching our members endure the pandemic for nearly two years, the state of your mental health was more important to us than ever. The pandemic had put our planned 2020 Mental Health Survey on pause, but the CSMLS research team recommenced the study in 2021, focusing on the changes to members’ mental health since the onset of the pandemic.

The report, based on your responses, confirmed pandemic demands exacerbated your workloads in the lab, especially with the MLT shortage, as the concept “I have too much work to do everything well” saw a sharp increase from 9% to 68% in 2021.

The study found that 29% of CSMLS members are experiencing incidences of nonspecific serious psychological distress (NSPD), which includes mental health problems severe enough to cause impairment in social, work, or school functioning; and to require treatment.

Other key findings related to psychological distress include the following:

• Incidences of NSPD have nearly doubled since 2018.
• Respondents reported that feelings associated with psychological distress affected their ability to work four days per month on average.
• 20% of respondents saw a doctor or other health professional about these feelings with an average of two visits each.

You can read the full report findings here.

On December 3, we released a joint statement, with Sonography Canada (SG) and the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists (CAMRT), on the mental health status of allied health professionals, fueled by the findings of this joint research project. The statement continues to raise awareness of the mental health struggles allied health professionals face as they care for Canadians through a pandemic.

We are now using the information collected to create new methods for our members to resolve mental health issues, including stress and burnout, and focus on well being.

The CSMLS Certification and Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) department constantly adapted to pandemic challenges to help as many eligible candidates as possible sit the National Certification Exam and enter the workforce. In the middle of the pandemic, qualification processes must go on.

Remote proctored testing (RPT), first piloted June 2020, became a mainstay for the benefit of exam candidates. All MLT regulators now permit CSMLS-certified candidates in both in-person and RPT test format; thus, we plan to continue offering RPT, as it improves access, particularly during public gathering restrictions.

We doubled the exam dates between August 2020 and August 2021, to help as many graduating cohorts as possible and stabilize the number of available testing seats through the pandemic year.

To help exam candidates have the best possible experience while sitting the exam, for both in-person or using RPT, we launched new support resources:

• The “Demo Exam” or “CSMLS Test Drive” which allows exam candidates to experience the exam process and identify issues beforehand
• “Road to Result” video, explaining how the CSMLS Certification and PLA department releases exam results to help students, employers and educators understand the process post-exam
• Virtual Student Presentations, in a new monthly virtual format, connect us with even more students throughout the year