POCT techs or bench help

Hi Adonica,
I might take the approach of making sure this position took care of all of the training and competency assessments since MLS have a better chance of meeting all CLIA, etc, regulatory needs. In that vein of thought, I would isolate QA tasks that require TC qualifications and take advantage of the MLS role being able to cover them all.
I dont have POCC's that fall into this structure, we are very fortunate that all of my direct reports are 100% POCT. We do have 1 or 2 hospitals in our system that have a POCC that covers QA responsibilities for the core lab. They track and manage all of their CAP events and run and reveiw QA reports. 

I hope that your new management helps your program run smoothly and that they support your expertise and knowledge. Good Luck and keep us posted. 

Hi Adonica. This is an intriguing idea. Usually, it's the other way around and the POCC also has bench duties. This could definitely ensure that general lab techs have more respect for the job that POCCs do. I like Jeanne's idea to use them for competency assessment, especially now that we could be losing many or most of our nurse TCs. And remember that 2-year degrees will be able to be technical consultants with 4 years of experience, so even if the lab staff are MLTs, they could still help. At our sites, the lab is usually short-staffed so not sure how that would work. Would the new administration want the POCCs to cover a bench as well? Do keep us posted. 

Hi Adonica, I have a staff member that helps me.  I have trained her to do competency and reviews.  I am the only one in the lab so when I take off, I need someone to cover the POCC.  The issue I ran into was the staff member did not get placed with me very often so every time I wanted to take off, I would have to retrain every time.  So, I would suggest that if they are going to have staff help you, they are with you at least on a weekly basis.  The lab is short staffed, so they always got pulled to work the bench.  Hope it works for you!  

Interesting discussion. With the staffing needs and increased expectations for TCs in moderate testing, this could be one avenue to meet those regulations.

Hi Adonica - We used a bench tech resource to assist with a few things when we were down four staff members over a three-month period.  The bench tech helped in various ways including, validation of a new device (since she was familiar with that process, and we had a straightforward outline) a daily duty we call "tidy up" where our loaner devices are redocked or downloaded to insure they pick up any new operators, temperature monitoring in our lab space, and insuring that any loaner devices missing, where logged out properly overnight.  And I agree with what others have responded about competencies and/or trainings.  There's a good opportunity to use bench techs in this arena given the changes in the CAP regulations.