Location, vocation, procreation: how choice influences life expectancy in doctors.

BACKGROUND: Stress and mortality are negatively correlated and it is generally accepted that certain professions are more stressful than others. Medical graduates begin as a relatively homogenous population who then choose vastly different career options making doctors an ideal population in which to try to assess whether job stress is likely to be causal to increased mortality. AIMS: To establish the influence of various modifiable risk factors on the life expectancy of UK doctors. METHODS: We analysed a decade of obituaries from the British Medical Journal published between January 2003 and December 2012. Data included age at death (AAD), specialty, region (deanery), marriage status and children. RESULTS: A total of 3068 obituaries were eligible for inclusion. Mean AAD was 78.5 years. Male sex was associated with a significantly increased AAD by an additional 3.8 years (95% CI 2.4-5.2 years, P < 0.001). Public health, obstetrics and gynaecology and laboratory medicine specialties were all associated with significantly increased AAD (P < 0.05). London and Northern Ireland deaneries were both associated with significantly increased AAD (P < 0.05). Each additional child was associated with a relative increase in AAD of +1.1 years (95% CI 0.7-1.4 years, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that location and career choices may affect life expectancy. While this does not necessarily reflect quality of life, the additional years of life gained from having extra children have a positive effect on your quantity of life.

[The issues and basic principles of training of physicians of clinical laboratory diagnostics].

The article considers the main positions concerning the clinical laboratory diagnostics as an independent clinical specialty and the principles of professional training and improvement of specialists. The basic issues complicating the training and improvement of personnel to be kept in line with actual needs of laboratory service of public health system are discussed. Among them are the availability of laboratory academic sub disciplines demanding a profound special theoretical education and technical skills; the need to account in the process of professional training the variety of forms, sizes and types of laboratory structures in different medical institutions; the need of special training programs for numerous specialists with non-medical basic education. The combination of the present system of postgraduate training of specialists on chairs of state educational organizations with initiative involvement of specialists in various public forms of permanent professional improvement (professional scientific societies meetings, research conferences, internet seminars, etc.) is supported Along with a positive appraisal of the existing system of training in the state educational institutions and corresponding regulation documents, a critique is expressed regarding certain actual documents which improperly limit the administrative functions of physicians of clinical laboratory diagnostics and complicate training of bacteriologists for clinical laboratories.

The Study Support Associate: an alternative to the traditional animal care position.

The authors describe the development of a position in animal care that combines husbandry, veterinary care, breeding colony management, and in vivo research support. The integration of these tasks gives participating animal care staff more diverse responsibilities and leads to more effective communication and collaboration between researchers and husbandry personnel.

Time to pregnancy among Danish laboratory technicians who were a part of the National Birth Cohort.

OBJECTIVES: The Danish National Birth Cohort was used to examine whether laboratory work was associated with reduced fecundity. METHODS: Self-reported data on laboratory work and waiting time to pregnancy (0-2, 3-5, 6-12 and > 12 months) were used for 829 female laboratory technicians interviewed in 1997-2003. Altogether 6250 female teachers formed the reference group. A discrete-time survival analysis with a complementary log-log link was applied to estimate the fecundability ratio between the exposed and unexposed women, with adjustment for maternal age, gravidity, smoking, prepregnancy body mass index, and paternal job. RESULTS: No difference in time to pregnancy was found between the laboratory technicians and teachers or between the laboratory technicians with different exposures. The adjusted fecundability ratio for the laboratory technicians was 0.94 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.86-1.02] for all pregnancies and 0.98 (95% CI 0.86-1.13) for first pregnancies. A healthy worker effect was found for the laboratory technicians working with the work processes under study. CONCLUSIONS: The results do not suggest that laboratory work in Denmark at present impairs female fecundity.

Risk factors of job-related depression in laboratory technicians in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM) and Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM) hospitals in Kelantan.

A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the risk factors of job-related depression in laboratory technicians in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM) and Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM) Hospitals in Kelantan, between September 2001 and February 2002. One hundred and two laboratory technicians from HUSM and 79 from KKM Hospitals were selected and 84 (82.4%) from HUSM and 71 (89.9%) from KKM Hospitals were recruited as study subjects. Data were collected by self-administered questionnaire using the validated Malay version of the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ), originally developed by Robert Karasek. The results indicated significant associations between the risk factors of job-related depression, and low social support, and high psychological demands (OR 3.0, 95% CI 1.1-8.8) in laboratory technicians in HUSM. However, for laboratory technicians in KKM Hospitals, the significant association was between job-related depression, and low social support and low decision authority (OR 9.7, 95% CI 1.1-91.1). Low social support was highly associated with job-related depression in laboratory technicians in HUSM and KKM Hospitals. We, therefore, conclude that low social support positively predicted depression in laboratory technicians in HUSM and KKM Hospitals. In addition, high psychological demands also significantly predicted depression in laboratory technicians in HUSM; however, for laboratory technicians in KKM Hospitals, low decision authority was the significant predictor of depression.

CLT and CLS job responsibilities: current distinctions and updates.

OBJECTIVE: This study was undertaken to address the following questions: 1. What tasks distinguish the job of a clinical laboratory scientist (CLS) from that of a clinical laboratory technician (CLT)? 2. What changes in role distinctions, have occurred for entry-level CLS and CLT practitioners over the five-year period 1993-98? 3. What tasks have been deleted from the CLT and CLS content outlines because they were not frequently performed or not considered entry-level? 4. What changes in practice are reflected in the current job analyses? DESIGN: A national job analysis of tasks constituting the job of clinical laboratory scientists (CLSs) and clinical laboratory technicians (CLTs) was conducted in 1998-99 as part of a standard setting process for the certifying examinations of the National Credentialing Agency for Laboratory Personnel (NCA). The job analyses relied upon mail surveys to 1200 individuals for each job level asking respondents to identify tasks significant to effective practice at job entry. The task lists resulting from statistical analysis of those surveys were examined to answer the study questions. PARTICIPANTS: The sample for each survey included 1200 practitioners, educators and laboratory managers selected at random from membership in professional organizations or from NCA certificant lists. Sampling was stratified to insure adequate practitioner representation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The mean rating on a four point scale for each item on the surveys was evaluated for overall significance as well as significance across geographic regions. The tasks meeting specified criteria were retained in the final task lists. Tasks were counted and their content evaluated to compare CLS and CLT job tasks. RESULTS: The response rates to the surveys were 33% for CLT and 21% for CLS. Reliability was judged based on average intraclass correlation coefficients of .86 and .82 for the CLT and CLS surveys, respectively. There were 952 tasks retained on the CLS content outline and 725 retained on the CLT content outline of the 1151 tasks on the original survey. Seven hundred and twenty two tasks were found on content outlines of both job levels, representing a 76% overlap. Tasks found only on the CLS outline included advanced technical tasks, a few management tasks, and more communication tasks. CONCLUSIONS: The jobs of CLS and CLT practitioners are distinct at job entry level with CLSs performing a broader array of technical and communication tasks as well as some management tasks. Though CLS staff uses few management skills at job entry, those tasks are performed by CLS staff in the laboratory and curricula must help prepare graduates for these tasks expected of experienced staff. CLTs perform tasks requiring problem solving and high level reasoning. CLT curricula must address the need for CLTs to perform these tasks.

A comprehensive career ladder for the clinical laboratory.

Retention and promotion of current staff are highly desirable goals for today's clinical laboratory because recruitment and replacement are costly. In the face of balancing these costs with competition for technologists and limited upward mobility within the laboratory, a comprehensive career ladder that expands employee job horizons and gives depth to their jobs is a powerful tool for staff retention and, at the same time, increases the organization's productivity and recruitment potential.