HEALTH TECH BOOM; MEDICAL FIELD EXPANDS TO TRAIN MANY KINDS OF TECHNICIANS FOR DOCTOR OFFICES, HOSPITALS

Linda Lewis, left, discusses the proper use of a patient lift with Minyo Acord and Ryan Pereira, student CNAs, at Chateau Girardeau.

There was a time when, if you were in the medical field, you were either a doctor or a nurse. Doctors made diagnoses and performed surgery and wrote prescriptions and outlined courses of treatment. Nurses, basically, did everything else.

It's not that simple any more. Doctors aren't the only health-care professionals who have become specialized. Some of the people you see at the hospital or the doctor's office can administer medication, and some can't. Some can draw blood, operate monitoring equipment or run lab tests, while others don't have the necessary education or certification.

At many hospitals, care centers and nursing homes, day-to-day patient care is done by certified nurse assistants (CNAs) or licensed practical nurses (LPNs), while registered nurses (RNs) handle patient assessments, paperwork and administrative duties.

Besides doctors and the various nursing professionals, hospital personnel rosters also include a lot of the following titles: lab assistants, pediatric technicians, OB technicians, EEG technicians, EKG technicians, certified surgical technicians, histology technicians and many more. And odds are, if a certification or training program is offered, a job's available to go along with it.

Bob Owen, human resources director at St. Francis Medical Center, said sometimes there are more jobs than workers.

In many cases, hospitals are competing with other industries for job candidates, especially in Cape Girardeau, where the labor pool is fairly small and the employment rate is high. "That really makes it extremely difficult" to find candidates, he said.

Orville Krauss, adult education coordinator at the Cape Girardeau Area Vocational-Technical School, estimated health-care fields make up 60 to 70 percent of the school's adult education programs. The school offers training and certification for LPNs, CNAs, certified medical technicians, IV therapists, respiratory therapists, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, dental assistants and medical transcriptionists.

Placement rates for the school's health-care graduates are "almost a hundred percent," Krauss said. If students want a job, they can find one.

"We provide the individuals with a very pointed skill," he said. "We do it in a short period of time. None of our programs lasts more than a year. That person's not looking to, quote, go to school. That person's looking to get a job."

Experts cite a number of factors for the medical job market's continued good health: rapidly developing technology, the demand for more and better health care and the need to cut costs all play a part.

Many of the technician specializations have developed "because of the sophistication that medicine has reached in this country, the level of things that we can do," said Dr. Mark Kasten, a family practitioner in Cape Girardeau.

When Kasten started practicing medicine 15 years ago, removal of a gallbladder meant a weeklong stay in the hospital. Today, most patients go home after an overnight stay.

"The instrumentation, the equipment, the laboratory technology and testing we have now do require, probably, a higher level of experience and knowledge," Kasten said.

And, he points out, the better trained and more knowledgeable health-care workers are, the better care patients receive.

"You have to see those (better results) as good for the consumer," he said. "Everything we do, though, in one way or another has a cost. I think there's certainly many of these people we can't do without. The country demands high quality medical care, and that costs money."

"Medical care is such an expensive item," said Dr. Scot Pringle, president of the Cape Girardeau County Area Medical Society. Using technicians is one way to help cut that cost.

"There are a lot of things that technicians can do at a lot more cost-effective rate than occupying a physician or a nurse," he said. "Nurse-practitioners are perfectly capable of handling most health care needs."

Technicians make up about 15 percent of the total work force at St. Francis Medical Center, "everyone who's not a doctor or a nurse," Owen said.

The field has been growing, he said, "I think mainly because the pressure to cut health-care costs has caused hospitals and others to look at how they're doing things."

Changes are in the works. While hospitals are hiring more technicians and technologists, they're looking for people who are skilled in more than one specialty area. "The people who used to just draw blood no longer just draw blood," Owen said. "A phlebotomist is a thing of the past."

Instead, medical technologists draw blood for testing, monitor a patient's vital signs, provide direct care and work with nurses on patient assessment.

"Multi-skilling" makes employees more valuable, Owen said, and makes health care more cost-effective.

"It's not just competition," he said. "It's being able to provide the care in a manner that people can afford."

Owen doesn't think the trend in hiring technicians and technologists rather than doctors and nurses will change any time soon.

. "I think as long as we can get the academic world behind us and get the training that's necessary and the education that's necessary, I think you'll see that expand widely," he said.