Retirement challenge looms.

Lately, retirement has been on my mind. Not that I intend to retire for several years to come but because folk younger than me are going home for good. My philosophy is like that of Robert Orben, "Every day I get up, look through the Forbes' list of the richest people in America, and if I am not there, I go to work." But the nature of my work is not that upon which a life might just depend like that of yours, dear readers.

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In this age of bloggers, cyber-journalists, and My Spacers and YouTubers, everyone is a writer even if he cannot spell, even if he really has nothing much to say. Poet Dylan Thomas said, "A born writer is born scrofulous; his career is an accident dictated by physical or circumstantial disabilities." I had never thought of myself that way; but in comparison to those of you laboring in the medical lab, I often feel sort of scrofulous.

My entire life since age 12 has been all about wordsmithing--cobbling together travel stories, making executives look even more fabulous in print, touting a major university to its alumni, teaching college composition ... writing letters to dad for extra cash. But not one single person who ever read my material had his life hanging in the balance over one single word I ever wrote.

So, when we featured the state of MLS programs in the USA last month, the statistics of the ongoing, growing shortage of medical lab personnel again shocked me. Dr. Yas Simonian cited two incoming MLTs for every seven retiring; 100,000 positions vacant by 2012. I had to ask myself, what are we going to do without you?

Industry has automated many lab functions that once were manual. The first time I witnessed a large machine delicately separating a sample into a half-dozen tubes, I was speechless. Seeing machinery relieve much of the mundane lab workload was truly impressive. (See more innovation at LabAutomation2008, Palm Springs, Jan. 26-29.)

Another answer--one as important as automation--is to personally "showcase" the medical laboratory career to young students from grade school through college, and that is the job of each of us, even us scrofulous writers. Many readers have told us of hosting learning events in their labs for students. Others have written for MLO about their experiences as volunteers in foreign countries and on board medical ships, as well as their military lab service in combat-support hospitals.

Olympus America's Dr. Stephen Tang, our featured executive last month, stressed the importance of career mentoring. Industry giants like ARUP, bioMerieux, Beckman Coulter, and a slew of others too numerous to list here encourage student participation in varied activities, and many award scholarships. Abbott's "Labs Are Vital" campaign brings to the fore the "vitality" young people are seeking in a profession as well as supplies much-needed equipment in schools. All of the membership organizations supporting med-lab techs provide an array of forums for various professional interests inside and outside the lab.

Every person involved in the medical laboratory field has an opportunity to engage young minds in the career possibilities that can accrue to them. Each of those lab pros, even those retiring, has a fiat to make those opportunities if we are to continue to man our emptying labs; automation will take us only so far. The consequences of our non-action will be painfully obvious soon--2012 is only four short years away.

So, be a mentor. Host a lab tour. Speak at high-school career day. Raise scholarship funds. Work with professional groups. Please, find the time. Otherwise, the empty halls of American labs will be echoing lickety-split.

Besides, you do not want to become scrofulous like me.

Carren Bersch

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