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National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences (NAACLS) is a US based educational accreditation organization that accredits clinical laboratory educational programs. NAACLS is accredited by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).

NAACLS is the primary accrediting body for clinical laboratory programs in the US, though the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools(ABHES) also accredits a handful of programs. Graduates of the ABHES are not eligible for the American Society for Clinical Pathology(ASCP) certification, but are eligible for the American Medical Technologists(AMT) certification.

NAACLS has criticized the rise of non-accredited, on-the-job training (OJT) programs as undermining the laboratory profession.

History

It was founded in 1973, after the United States Department of Education pressured the American Society for Clinical Pathology(ASCP) to disband their Board of Schools (BOS) following monopolization concerns. At the time of its founding, there were seven categories of laboratory personnel: Clinical Laboratory Assistant (CLA), Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT), Medical Technologist (MT), Cytotechnologist (CT), and Histotechnologist (HT).

In 2023, there was an effort to standardize program nomenclature which did not pass.

Programs

Decreases in laboratory reimbursement have led to a decline in the number of NAACLS accredited MLS programs from ~700 in 1975 to ~240 programs in 2002, where it has held since.

NAACLS program graduates are eligible to sit for American Society for Clinical Pathology(ASCP) certifications.

Stance on non-accredited training programs

NAACLS has criticized the rise of non-accredited, on-the-job training (OJT) programs as undermining the laboratory profession.

How are laboratory managers responding to the need for graduates from accredited programs to fill their open positions? By hiring people with an undergraduate degree in a science (usually Biology, Chemistry, or Biochemistry) and training them on-the-job if they can, avoiding the accreditation process entirely as well as the certification of the individual. This ‘shortcut’ takes the laboratory scientist’s educational background right back to where we started in the 1920s! I see several threats to our accredited educational programs and, quite frankly, our profession if hiring non-educated, non-certified personnel continues...Devaluing accreditation has devastating consequences for our profession. If the clinical laboratories don’t require certification of their employees, we lose a subset of our target applicants resulting in decreased admissions and likely closure of accredited programs. More importantly, an increase in laboratory workers who are not properly educated dilutes our profession and professional identity, damaging our healthcare system....The downstream effects of this quick fix are widespread. We haven’t addressed how it affects those individuals in the long term. Likely, they will be trained only for their particular environment, which limits their upward mobility, especially if they leave the lab they were trained in. If future laboratory employees (we cannot call them professionals anymore) are those who are trained on the job to perform tests only in one specific laboratory, we have lost everything we have worked for in building and defining our profession and scope of practice over the last 100 years.

— Dr. Maribeth Flaws, NAACLS Board of Directors President, Educational Programs: Threats and Opportunities, NAACLS Annual Report, 2023

References

1. ^ FA, Barbara L. Nichols, MS, DHL, RN; PhD, Catherine R. Davis, RN; Doig, Kathryn (19 October 2009). "Chapter 6 - Health Care Professional Practice in the United States - Medical Technologists and Medical Laboratory Technicians". The Official Guide for Foreign-Educated Allied Health Professionals: What you need to Know about Health Care and the Allied Health Professions in the United States. Springer Publishing Company. pp. 172–175. ISBN 978-0-8261-1064-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
2. ^ Flaws, Maribeth (15 June 2023). "President's Report – Educational Programs: Threats and Opportunities". The NAACLS News.
3. Turgeon, Mary Louise (14 April 2014). Linne & Ringsrud's Clinical Laboratory Science - E-Book: The Basics and Routine Techniques. Elsevier Health Sciences. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-323-29280-1.
4. ^ Miller, Herb (14 February 2023). "NAACLS's 50th Birthday- Tempus Fugit". The NAACLS News. Retrieved 23 February 2024.
5. "Proposed Nomenclature Standard". The NAACLS News. 19 October 2023.
6. ^ "2023 NAACLS Annual Report" (PDF). NAACLS. March 19, 2024. Retrieved 23 March 2024.

External links

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