[emge]

They were probably looking at covering themselves after the blood scandal when they last emphasized that they'd have nurses doing the screening... and now they're probably waking up to the fact that it's not that tough of a job.

There's many more difficult jobs where a nurse can be hired for them, but nurses with their general background aren't as well trained as techs with less, but more specialized training. e.g. any nurse can put on sticky pads and perform an ECG, but very few are trained to read ECGs to the extent that a cardiovascular technologist with 2 years of training JUST in heart pathophysiology and interpreting ECGs is - the same with many other techs that take 2, 3, 4 years of training just in one thing.

When you need something done a few times, a nurse is great. When you need one specific task performed over and over, hire the person with more specialized training in that particular task - whom you need to pay less than a nurse. It's a no-brainer for ECGs.

This one should be another no-brainer. Nurses should be hired for nursing, not questionnaire-taking. It's not invasive, requires administrering no medication... nothing that requires nursing or registration with a college of professionals. Even if they end up plunking Grade 12 graduates through a 2-week or 4-month course or something of the sort, it's still more training on that particular task than any nurse is given, and instead of 70k they can pay them 30k.