CLINICAL LAB SCIENEC

38
ESSENTIALS OF CLINICAL LABORATORY SCIENCE
invention of the company that owns the school! So, as a precautionary note, the
student who wishes to receive a diploma or certificate in an area of health care
should ensure that any private school attended is accredited by a professional
organization with national standing. A school that is not accredited or advertises
that the program is accredited but “certifies” the completer of a program as a
professional in a very short period of time and for large sums of money should
be suspect. In the past, some schools even certified students as professional laboratory
technicians in a program of only a few months’ duration.
Disparities in Personnel Standards
The credentialing process becomes further muddied when there are differences
between facility accreditation bodies and other professional accreditation groups
that require the employees of the facility to meet certain standards. These two
types of groups offer credentialing from entirely different vantage points, where
one focuses on the needs of the facility, and the other has the professional employees’
interest at heart. In the best of worlds, all of the standards, whether they are
from licensure, registry agencies, or accreditation bodies for both facilities and
educational programs, would be the same, but this is not always the case. However,
most accreditation organizations for facilities will accept personnel qualifications
as satisfactory when the laboratory workers have met the requirements for
competency that are acceptable to the state licensure office or the facility itself.
There are some areas of the country where states are weak in their requirements
for certification of medical laboratory workers. In those states where
obtaining credentials such as certification and registration is somewhat voluntary,
the accreditation process for the facility may require stronger credentials
than either the institution’s standards or state laws may have established. Then,
the requirements for the facility accreditation agency would take precedence. As
stated previously, in most states there are no personnel licensure laws and these
states normally accept registry by one of the previously mentioned agencies as
being equivalent to having a license.
Those states not requiring personnel licensure typically accept technicians
and technologists registered by ASCP and AMT, among other certifying groups,
as workers who are essentially licensed. For instance, graduates from an educational
program for medical laboratory students accredited by NAACLS and
registered by one of the major agencies such as ASCP or AMT would be acceptable.
The ASCP, for example, will only administer the registry examination to
those who are graduates of an NAACLS-accredited program. States without
personnel licensure will then accept these registrants as being qualified to work
in the medical laboratory. As one can see, all of the processes relating to facility
accreditation and certification such as registry and licensure are interwoven and
it is difficult to separate the three entities. Table 2-3 shows the agencies that currently
certify laboratory personnel along with others that either collect samples
or provide basic tests of a variety called waived procedures, such as those accrediting
POLs. This will be discussed more fully later in this book.
Most colleges and universities require an additional level of accreditation for
the institution such as regional accreditation through COC. These are regional
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