Average age

[John C. Staley]

Cliff, I've been glancing at the birthday list and it got me thinking (dangerous, I know), how hard would it be to run an algorithm that could calculate either the average age or the median age of group members.  It might give us some perspective on the need to recruit more people into the profession.  Just a random thought.

 

[Cliff]

Great idea, working on it now.

I have so many thoughts on this. 

When I was in the hospital, we had several agencies we worked with.  They rarely had any candidates for us.  I'm not talking good candidates, I'm talking any candidates.

Last year, I went to a conference where someone from the state (Tennessee) talked about different healthcare fields, the projected need, and the projected supply (of staff) rate.  For all fields, the need was higher than the supply.  For all fields (except one) the need and the supply eventually met - maybe in 1 year, maybe in 5.  For med techs, the need continued to climb over the years, and the supply of staff went in the opposite direction.  They never met.

Med techs are not paid a fair wage.  We need to go to school for 2 or 4 years, earn little to no respect, work in the basement, and are offered poor pay and benefits compared to people with similar educations.  It's hard to fill these jobs.

When I was in the hospital, my lab had 45 FTEs.  We had about a 20% vacancy for years.

[Cliff]

This is a chart of our members by age.

It only includes those who gave a year of birth and are not banned members.  That came to 6,920 people.  There is no data validation on this; some people may have filled in just anything or mistakenly entered incorrect data.  With this large volume of data, the few stray values are likely nullified by the people who want to provide correct data.

 

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

I'm sorry, but I just don't believe the member who says they are 122 (Oh, I dunno though - I've just looked in the mirror!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

Edited January 26 by Malcolm Needs

[John C. Staley]

Thanks Cliff, that is some interesting data.  When I was working in Utah there was a push for licensing Clinical Laboratory Scientists every couple of years in the state legislature.  What I found most interesting, surprising and some what alarming was that the most strident lobbying opposition came from physician groups.  My assumption was that they did not want to have to pay for qualified people to do the testing in their office and clinic labs.  

[Cliff]

On 1/26/2024 at 10:50 AM, Malcolm Needs said:

I'm sorry, but I just don't believe the member who says they are 122 (Oh, I dunno though - I've just looked in the mirror!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

or 12. 

As I mentioned, it is imperfect data, but overall, I think it likely reflects our staffing ages.