Job analysis in the clinical laboratory

Questionnaires were sent to 111 hospitals located within a 100-mile radius of Morgantown, West Virginia. In the 55 responding hospitals, 1,532 laboratory workers were employed; of this total, 399 were MT(ASCP), 55 were MLT(ASCP), 262 were CLA(ASCP), and 816 were not certified by the Board of Registry of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP). Participating hospital laboratory directors were asked to distribute task inventories to medical technologists and to individuals not certified as MT(ASCP). One hundred sixty-five task inventories were completed and returned for analysis. Using the chi square test, comparison was made between the tasks performed by ASCP-certified medical technologists and ASCP-certified laboratory assistants. Both performed essentially the same tasks in the clinical laboratories included in this study. In the final analysis, teaching and supervision were performed more frequently by MTs than by CLAs.