The Alex & Jo Campbell Centre for Health and Wellness (photo by Camosun College A\/V Services).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCamosun sent BCSLS an application for accreditation in late July 2019, according to Ashford. The approval process takes a minimum of two months, says Ashford, which means the earliest Camosun could have been granted approval was late September, but the program had already started by then.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth organizations are doing exactly what they believed they were supposed to do,\u201d says Camosun vice president of education John Boraas. \u201cWe\u2019re discovering that there are some communications that we are trying to rectify as we speak.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBoraas says Camosun moved forward with the program because it had \u201cevery assurance and every element of certainty\u201d that accreditation would follow, but Ashford says that assurance \u201ccouldn\u2019t have\u201d come from the BCSLS. (Boraas did not confirm by press time who this assurance was from.)<\/p>\n
Boraas\u2014who oversees and is responsible for all programming at the college\u2014says that deans bring forward all new programs for approval to the college\u2019s Education Council. According to Education Council meeting minutes available online, at the November 21, 2018 Education Council meeting, the Integrated Curriculum Committee\u2014an Education Council sub-committee\u2014had consensus\u00a0to recommend approval of the program.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBoraas says that the college believes \u201cwith absolute certainty\u201d that students will leave the program able to find work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get to a place where there\u2019s tension, certainly, part of what a person does is think back through all kinds of different ways that it can be provided and made clear,\u201d says Boraas, \u201cbut we certainly did go through a process of being sure that students knew that there would be parts of their journey that included accreditation processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ashford, who says he received his first email from a concerned Camosun student on January 26, 2020, says that Camosun was forewarned of the consequences of not running a BCSLS-approved program. (There is no governing body saying Camosun can\u2019t run the program without BCSLS approval.)<\/p>\n
\u201cCamosun didn\u2019t do what they were supposed to do, quite frankly,\u201d says Ashford. \u201cThey didn\u2019t get their program approved… They chose to proceed without our approval at that point, even though they had been forewarned about the consequences of all this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ashford says that students currently in the program will be eligible for BCSLS certification by taking an alternative practicum, which he says the BCSLS is \u201cbending over backwards\u201d to do; he says it will not be done again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a one-time process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
BCSLS charges $89 for one-time certification; Boraas says the college will not pass this cost on to students.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur commitment in this is that there won\u2019t be a cost to students,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cOur reason for making changes to the program was to serve students better.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAccording to workbc.ca, all certified medical lab assistants in British Columbia are required to be graduates of a BCSLS-approved program; the certification that students can receive following completion of BCSLS-approved programs is voluntary on the part of the students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAccording to Island Health job postings available online, a \u201crecognized\u201d program is required as part of an applicant\u2019s education. A spokesperson for Island Health was unavailable to be interviewed for this story but informed Nexus<\/i> that Island Health is working with Camosun and BCSLS to implement the alternative practicum process, adding that students who successfully complete a practicum would be eligible to apply <\/b>for appropriate job postings when they graduate.<\/p>\n
LifeLabs, a major employer of CMLA graduates, did not respond to interview requests, but some job postings available online also indicate \u201crecognized\u201d programs (\u201cor equivalent related experience\u201d) are required as part of an applicant\u2019s education.<\/p>\n
Two CMLA students, who chose to remain anonymous, say that employers have said nothing to them yet about how this will impact employment, and that they have asked for assurance in writing several times. They say they shouldn\u2019t have to be the ones dealing with this stress. One student says they were \u201clivid\u201d and \u201capoplectic with rage\u201d when they found out that it wasn\u2019t BCSLS-approved.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only are we investing money for this, both [the other student] and I, we work 12-hour days seven days a week for this program.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe other student says they felt the same way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt betrayed,\u201d says the student. \u201cI felt enraged. I felt afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says Camosun is working to fix the situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon when major programming changes are made that there are things to be fixed as we move through,\u201d says Boraas, \u201cand we will fix them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The student who says they were livid says that what Camosun is doing now doesn\u2019t change what\u2019s already happened.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThey are making many changes,\u201d says the student, \u201cbut that doesn\u2019t mitigate the damage that\u2019s already done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ashford confirmed to Nexus<\/i> that BCSLS received a proposal from Camosun in early March 2020 for accreditation of the program for when the next cohort starts in September 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In September 2019, Camosun students in the Certified Medical Laboratory Assistant (CMLA) program showed up for class, unaware that the program was no longer provincially accredited. When the program was offered through the college\u2019s Continuing Education department, it was provincially accredited by the British Columbia Society of Laboratory Science (BCSLS). When the college moved the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,250],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-march-18-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19198,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19197\/revisions\/19198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/48531184837_b7937b2325_o.jpg\")
<\/a>