Scores of patients stranded as lab technicians strike at Komfo Anokye

Patients requiring laboratory tests have been left stranded as scientists at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital strike over the appointment of two physicians by management to their department.

Over 300 medical laboratory scientists, technicians, and laboratory assistants have begun a seven-day sit-down strike from May 20 to May 27, 2021, over the appointment of the physicians.

The group insists professionals who qualify to fill the two available slots have been sidelined for the doctors.

“No patient sample will be worked on in our labs in KATH. We will come to work, but we will not work,” Ernest Baidoo Boateng, Local Union Chairman of the Ghana Allied Medical Laboratory Scientist Council, said.

“It is not the duty of the doctor to request for a lab test then come to the lab to conduct the test; that is not done,” he emphasized.

According to him, the laboratory profession has evolved over the years, and there are professionals within the laboratory services licensed by the Allied Health Professional Council and are being monitored.

“Doctors diagnose and request for lab tests, and that is where the lab technicians come in… there is no way these two job descriptions conflict… They are clinicians; we are in the laboratory, the two are different by law under Act 857.”

“ All we are saying is that they should be in their lane. They should practice their medicine and also leave us to practice as defined by law in 2013,” he added.

He insisted that medical doctors’ presence in the laboratories means that lab professionals do not have the qualification to practice, and “that is what we will not agree because the two professions are different”.

The association’s action is likely to affect investigations, diagnoses, and treatment of patients at the hospital.

The hospital could lose revenue if the strike continues, but the union chairman insisted the members have no other option but to strike.

Hospital management has declined to comment on the impasse.