An event titled ‘The Place of Pathology Technicians in Healthcare and Our Association Activities’ was held by Üsküdar University School of Health Services Vocational. Gizem Havva Bilgin, President of the Medical Pathology Technicians Association and Chief Technician of the Pathology Department at Ankara Bayındır Söğütözü Hospital, participated as a guest at the event.
The event, moderated by Lecturer Eda Yetimoğlu, Head of the Pathology Laboratory Techniques Program at Üsküdar University School of Health Services Vocational, saw high participation.
“We Established the ‘Medical Pathology Technicians’ Association in June 2020”
At the event held online, Gizem Havva Bilgin, President of the Medical Pathology Technicians Association and Chief Technician of the Pathology Department at Ankara Bayındır Söğütözü Hospital, stated that pathology technicians will now have a job description and guide when they start work. Bilgin said; “We established the medical pathology technicians association in June 2020. When the Ministry of Health invited us to a meeting, they told us we needed to establish an association for the Ministry to engage with us, because you cannot establish any communication unless you are an association, a non-governmental organization. In other words, they don't deal with you personally; you need to be an association. That's why we took the initiative; when we established our association, Covid intervened, and therefore things progressed slowly. We conducted studies with the Ministry via both phone and email. What were these studies? They sent us job analysis forms. They asked us to review and complete these files. These job analysis forms were files detailing all the tasks, job branches, and the time taken for a pathology technician to perform them during the day, and 25 files were prepared. Regarding this matter, when we submitted these files to the Ministry, we received some feedback. At the workshop held in Antalya last December, the files were submitted to the Ministry and accepted, together with our academic instructors and instructors from the pathology federation. These files will serve as a job description, or a guide, for a pathology technician when they start work somewhere, be it a private hospital or a state hospital. Currently, no such guide exists. No work has been done in this area, meaning you will have your guide when you start work. The response from the Ministry after we prepared the job analysis forms was: ‘Indeed, your profession and job branches are completely separate from medical laboratory technicians.’ They realized the duties are very different. We did our best to resolve this. Their realization of this made us very happy. I believe we will see the results of this in the future.”
“The Proposal Awaits in the Hands of the Health Commission”
Gizem Havva Bilgin, drawing attention to the legal requirement for pathology laboratory work only during the analytical process, said; “The employment of individuals other than pathology laboratory technicians is actually prohibited by the medical laboratory regulation in 2013, but they can work as auxiliary staff. By law, pathology laboratory work is mandatory only in the analytical process, but this is not applied everywhere due to employment issues. To address this problem, we went to the Minister of Health with a legislative proposal in 2013, which he accepted, but we haven't made progress until today. Most recently, 4-5 months ago, when we presented this proposal to Recep Akdağ, who was then the minister and is now the head of the health commission in parliament, we indirectly reached out to him again, asking, ‘Can something be done for this legislative proposal?’ We went again 4-5 months ago, but we haven't received any results until today. Currently, this proposal is pending in the hands of the health commission. If we can somehow ensure its passage, this problem will be resolved.”