"From now on to the beginning of June, the company, together with a certain medical testing laboratory, will recruit nucleic acid samplers. They will work in Beijing for 8 hours a day, 800-900 yuan a day, take six days off and one day off. The long-term salary can be negotiated again, and they will enjoy five insurances and one fund." Zhou Jun is an executive director of a labor dispatch company in Beijing. In mid May, he asked the company's employees to share this recruitment information on major recruitment platforms. Then, "the company's consulting phone was blown up by job seekers, and there were also companies talking about cooperation".
Since the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council proposed in early May that "a 15 minute walk nucleic acid 'sampling circle' should be established in big cities", the signal of normalization of nucleic acid detection has become more clear. Many cities with a population of more than 10 million, including Beijing, have entered the queue of normalization of nucleic acid detection.
From May 30 to now, the situation of national epidemic prevention and control has been stable and good. The number of local infections in the new crown has dropped to less than 100 for six consecutive days, but 16 provinces have reported local epidemics in the past seven days.
"It is necessary to do a good job of normalized epidemic prevention and control carefully, based on early detection, early reporting, early isolation and early treatment, rapid disposal, precise prevention and control, and blocking the spread of the epidemic." Mi Feng, spokesman of the National Health Commission and deputy director of the publicity department, said at the press conference of the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council on June 5.
In the face of more frequent and large-scale nucleic acid sampling, transfer and detection tasks, nucleic acid samplers, information entry workers, PCR testers and other related occupations have become rare in the current cold job market.
However, the nucleic acid sampling and testing personnel recruited for the reasons of quickly filling the gap in the work station and expanding the detection capacity are often difficult to compare with the "old people" on the job in terms of work efficiency and quality safety control.
In order to improve the accuracy of nucleic acid detection in the normalization stage, the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council recently made it clear in the notice on Further Strengthening the whole chain supervision of novel coronavirus nucleic acid detection (hereinafter referred to as the notice) that all localities should attach great importance to source management such as nucleic acid sample collection, and do a good job in reserving and training nucleic acid sampling personnel; We will further implement the relevant provisions on the management of medical institutions and clinical gene amplification testing laboratories, and strictly examine and approve the access of testing personnel.
The competition of testing organizations
In the face of the increasing demand for sampling and testing personnel under the background of normalized epidemic prevention and control, many testing institutions have relaxed the recruitment and employment standards, and even offered higher salaries and benefits to join the war of robbing people.
"In the early days, the sampler had to have a nurse / nursing / medical professional background, but now the recruitment conditions have been relaxed. However, if the above professional background is met, the treatment is preferential." Zhou Jun told first finance.
According to the guidelines for the organization and implementation of regional novel coronavirus nucleic acid testing (Third Edition) in March this year, the sampling personnel must be medical personnel, and should be familiar with the collection methods of nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs, and carry out strict personal protection and infection control training.
Zhou Jun said that with the continuous promotion of higher frequency and larger scale regional nucleic acid screening and normalized epidemic prevention and control, third-party testing institutions have replaced public hospitals as the main force of nucleic acid testing, and these third-party testing institutions often outsource the recruitment of sampling personnel to headhunters.
"However, the employment standards shall be drawn up by the testing agency first." Zhou Jun said that in contrast, the standards for large-scale testing institutions to recruit sampling personnel will be more strict. For example, the personnel on duty must hold nurse qualification certificates.
Zhou Jun's statement was supported by a third-party testing agency. The relevant person in charge of a head testing agency told first finance that professional people do professional things, and the advantage of a third-party testing agency lies in testing. Therefore, generally, it will not take the initiative to undertake sampling work, but will be handed over to the cooperative unit for overall planning.
However, it is not easy to obtain a nurse practice certificate. According to the regulations on nurses, those who apply for nurse practice registration shall complete the general full-time nursing and midwifery courses of more than 3 years specified by the competent education department of the State Council and the competent health department of the State Council in secondary vocational schools and colleges, including the nursing clinical practice of more than 8 months in teaching and comprehensive hospitals, and obtain the corresponding academic certificates.
After many places in the country proposed to build a 15 minute nucleic acid "sampling circle", new sampling points, sampling stations and sampling houses have sprung up everywhere, which also means that more sampling personnel need to be recruited. To this end, many local official channels have relaxed the access qualifications of sampling personnel.
For example, according to the "recruitment announcement of Beijing nucleic acid sampling volunteers" issued by the Beijing Medical Association on May 24, the personnel who can carry out sampling work include retired medical personnel (under the age of 65), licensed pharmacists in retail pharmacies, school doctors and clinical medical students in medical colleges. These personnel shall have a college degree or above, and those with relevant professional study or work experience in clinical medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, nursing, pharmacy, testing, preventive medicine, hospital management, health management and biomedicine are preferred.
Compared with sampling, nucleic acid detection is more technically difficult and has stricter qualification requirements. Although there are 153000 professional and technical personnel engaged in nucleic acid detection in China, the personnel gap is still large after entering the normal nucleic acid detection stage, and many testing institutions are willing to offer high salaries to recruit testing personnel.
On several recruitment apps, the first financial reporter found that the monthly salary given by the third-party testing institutions is generally between 15000 and 35000 yuan (including board and lodging), and the standard working hours per day are 8 hours. Overtime pay can be added if the working hours are exceeded. Among them, the performance salary is linked to the number of laboratory test samples. The more samples, the higher the performance.
In terms of employment standards, Dean medical, Penny testing (65.200, -1.15, -1.73%) and other institutions mentioned that having PCR certificate or tester certificate is the hard standard. However, a third-party testing agency said that those with PCR testing experience and relevant professional background can also be considered in the employment.
The so-called PCR work license, namely the technical training certificate of clinical gene amplification testing laboratory, can be obtained when the applicant passes the theoretical examination and experimental training of the provincial clinical testing center. Compared with the examiners' examination, the educational background and professional threshold of PCR registration are lower, and there is no restriction on engaging in professional and technical work for more than one year.
"There is still a large shortage of testing personnel, especially in the past two years. Affected by the epidemic, many regions have postponed the provincial training. This means that some people who are willing to engage in the testing work are unable to go to the provincial temporary inspection center for training, so it is difficult to obtain the PCR work license." The person in charge of the above-mentioned third-party testing agency said.
Among them, the update of the PCR training course on the official website of the clinical inspection centers in Jiangxi, Sichuan and other provinces is still in 2020.
In this context, first finance learned that some testing institutions began to recruit core testing personnel and laboratory auxiliary personnel separately, and auxiliary personnel did not need to hold PCR certificates; In addition, many large-scale testing institutions have also begun to develop and undertake the training of PCR testing personnel to enrich their testing capabilities.
"Those who have no industry experience can be reserved for training." The personnel of a third-party testing institution mentioned in the recruitment information published on the boss direct employment.
Strengthen the supervision of the whole chain personnel
At this stage, the nucleic acid detection using PCR technology is regarded as the "gold standard" for the detection of novel coronavirus. However, any human omission in any link of "collection, delivery, inspection and reporting" may lead to the decline of detection sensitivity, and even "false positive" and "false negative".
"If the sampling is not standard, the oropharyngeal swab may fail to collect samples, resulting in false negatives. If the testing is not standardized and skilled, it may lead to false positives or the testing time exceeds the time limit." A local disease control official told China first finance.
Since April, more first and second tier cities across the country have joined the queue of normalized nucleic acid detection. From the perspective of detection frequency, most of these cities require citizens to have a 48 hour to 7-day test. More sampling and detection tasks mean more sampling and detection personnel. Just take the detection personnel as an example. According to the calculation of Soochow securities (6.540, 0.09, 1.40%), if all second tier and above cities conduct 48 hour normalized nucleic acid detection, the daily average detection capacity needs to reach 505/2=252.5 million tubes. As of mid April, the total number of technicians engaged in nucleic acid detection in China was close to 150000. If it is assumed that the number of technicians increases linearly with the improvement of detection capacity, the number of technicians required for 252.5 million tubes / day is 730000. This means that the promotion of normalized nucleic acid detection in second tier cities and above is expected to create 580000 new jobs.
However, with the expansion of the new employment sampling and testing group, it objectively increases the management difficulty of medical institutions and challenges the accuracy of nucleic acid detection. It is urgent to strengthen the qualification review, work supervision and personnel cooperation in all links of the whole chain.
According to the above notice issued by the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, the reserve and training of nucleic acid sampling personnel should be strengthened in the sampling process. All sampling personnel shall participate in nucleic acid sampling after receiving standardized training from the health department and passing the examination.
At present, some vocational education service companies adopt the mode of online learning and online examination when training nucleic acid samplers. In this regard, the notice also made it clear that "video training shall not replace practical operation training."
In terms of testing, the notice said that all localities should further implement the relevant provisions on the management of medical institutions and clinical gene amplification testing laboratories, and strictly examine and approve the access of testing institutions and personnel. The testing personnel shall not engage in nucleic acid testing until they have passed the technical training as required.
Recently, the relevant person in charge of the medical administration and medical administration bureau of the National Health Commission also publicly stated that it is necessary to strengthen the management of gene amplification testing laboratories, supervise the access of each laboratory carrying out nucleic acid testing, strengthen the qualification assessment of technical personnel, and constantly improve the access registration to ensure that the institutions and personnel entering meet the qualification requirements.
In fact, in January last year, the National Health Commission issued the notice on the establishment of a human resource information database for the nucleic acid sampling and testing of novel coronavirus, which proposed that medical personnel in various medical institutions, centers for Disease Control and prevention, and third-party laboratories at all levels should be included in the information database management.
According to the standardized workflow, the nucleic acid sampling and testing personnel shall log in to the website of the national clinical examination center to complete the personal information entry within one week after arriving at the post, and submit it to the provincial clinical examination center for review after the preliminary review by the administrator of the medical and health institution.
However, Zhou Jun said that the nucleic acid sampling and testing personnel who "work as temporary workers" may not be included in the information base of the national temporary inspection center. "As far as I know, many health committees are now strengthening the management of personnel. However, due to the large expansion of the personnel team and the daily settlement of wages of some personnel, it is still difficult to bring all sampling and testing personnel into the national information database."
(Zhou Jun is a pseudonym at the request of the interviewer)