Health System Futureproofing Needs To Happen Outside Of Just Doctor And Nurse Undergraduate Funding

Terry Taylor, President of the New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science (NZIMLS)

The NZIMLS continues to express our disappointment at the lack of consistent funding impetus passed on to vital struggling frontline health professions like Pathology. Our Medical laboratory workforce is once again passed over in the latest government health undergraduate student funding commitment. For a profession that consistently must fight for every single scrap of recognition and funding for our essential role, the latest government announcement, although positive for the wider health system, fails to give any hope to our desperate Pathology future proofing situation.

‘We are already at a point where our undergraduate Medical laboratory scientist courses are being grossly underfunded when compared to what other medical specialities like medicine and nursing have guaranteed. Our students continue to bear the brunt of massive debt passed on with some of the poorest renumeration provided for a registered medical practitioner when they graduate’, says Terry Taylor, President of the NZIMLS.

‘It is way overdue to have a significant funding boost that at least gives some hope for the otherwise bleak situation facing one of the most critical but seriously neglected frontline health workforces’, says Taylor.

The NZIMLS has been consistently raising futureproofing and training funding concerns to all Health and Government leadership over many years. The perilous situation faced by our Medical laboratory workforce and the services they provide has been entirely predictable. One of the biggest causes is the lack of reinvestment and intent at all levels of Pathology in training and education; both at the undergraduate and also in advanced specialist scientist and pathologist pathways. Put in simple terms, this quite simply must change if we want a stable base for the entire health system to feed off.

The term ‘out of sight, out of mind’, is once again ringing loud and clear for our desperate Pathology sector. Trust us when we say this oversight will show it’s ugly head for all the other medical specialities that rely on their clinical decisions from our expert pathology specialists. Our pathology workforce deserves to see a lot more hope than is being dished up in the preset environment.

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