Off the Bench

Rethinking Laboratory Medicine Education

Have you ever sat in a lecture and tried your best to hide that you're gently dosing off? Do you shudder at the thought of having to remember to coagulation cascade? In this episode, hosts Galina Dronova and Justin Hanenberg discuss how we can transform laboratory medicine education, whether in the classroom or on the bench, from procedural knowledge to conceptual. With our guest experts, Dr. Justin Kreuter and Theresa Malin, MEd, MLS(ASCP)CM, we flip the script from creating short term memory retention to a story of meaning.
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References
Brown, P., Roediger, H. McDaniel, M. (2014) Make it stick. The science of successful learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Cutrer, W. B., Miller, B., Pusic, M. V., Mejicano, G., Mangrulkar, R. S., Gruppen, L. D., Hawkins, R. E., Skochelak, S. E., & Moore, D. E. (2017). Fostering the development of master adaptive learners: A conceptual model to guide skill acquisition in medical education. Academic Medicine, 92(1), 70-75. DOI: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001323
Cutrer, W. B., Atkinson, H. G., Friedman, E., Deiorio, N., Gruppen, L. D., Dekhtyar, M., Pusic. M. (2018). Exploring the characteristics and context that allow Master Adaptive Learners to thrive. Medical Teacher, 40(8), 791-796. DOI: 10.1080/0142159X.2018.1484560
Six Strategies for Effective Learning. The Learning Scientists. https://www.learningscientists.org/downloadable-materials

Back to the Lab!

To celebrate Medical Laboratory Professionals Week, Off the Bench hosts Galina, Justin, and Sophia speak to Pat Jones, recently retired medical laboratory professional, and reflect on written responses from additional new retirees Janice Conway-Klassesen, Deb Rodahl, and Charlie Weinzierl. They take a journey through the lab of yesteryears, as well as what the lab might look like in the future. All four sages give advice to all future and upcoming laboratorians included in the description below:
Janice Conway-Klassesen
Keep your eyes open for opportunities. Many laboratory practitioners are down on the profession due to the lack of recognition. But I believe that if you do not feel valued where you are, it is up to you to change that. You can work the bench for your whole career and feel very valued and fulfilled if you are in the right place. Or you can seize those little opportunities that present themselves and choose a different professional path. Like any other degree, you can use your laboratory education in a variety of different careers. Make your own career.
Pat Jones
Keep in mind that there is a person represented by the test you are performing. This provides motivation for consistent, high-quality work.
Keep learning. Scientific knowledge is always expanding, and learning new things keeps you interested and interesting. Being current facilitates pertinent conversations within the broader medical community.
Think outside the box. Laboratory medicine gives you great skills that are transferable to quality assurance, pharmaceuticals, biotech, management, etc.
Deb Rodahl
I always loved the laboratory because it represented a combination of science and technology. I think for the upcoming generations the same will be true, but as with anything, you get out of your career what you put into it.
Be active in a professional organization and understand that is how you will continue to learn and grow – you never know where this path will take you!
Don’t isolate yourself in the laboratory, you need to interact with all the other healthcare team members.
Remember your team is the entire health care team – you are all working to improve the lives of the patients we serve.
Speak up and provide input – don’t wait for others to do it for you.
Look for things to improve.
Don’t be the person who wants things to “stay the same”; the world is continually changing/evolving and we need keep up or initiate the change.
Charlie Weinzierl
Hospital labs comprised half of my career. Reference laboratories another quarter. And the final quarter was in a Fortune 500 company that manufacturers and sells products to clinical laboratories. If you want to eventually move from the bench into supervision or management, you may want to volunteer for special projects as they come along. Better yet, make it known to your superiors that you welcome a challenge. Identifying problems in your workplace is helpful to enlightened leaders, and they love it when you have carefully thought of some possible avenues where solutions may be found.

Recalibration - Lab Personality Quizzes

In this silly and fun recalibration episode, hosts Sophia Chandrasekar, Galina Dronova, and Justin Hanenberg take lab-related personality quizzes. Find out their results, and take the tests for yourself:
Which Piece of Lab Equipment Are You? https://www.scinote.net/piece-lab-equipment-hilarious-quiz/
Which Immune Cell Are You? https://www.stemcell.com/virtual-conference-exhibition/immunology/immune-cell-quiz
Pick Seven Random Things And We'll Guess Your Blood Type https://www.buzzfeed.com/bananabunny/can-we-guess-your-blood-type-based-on-your-prefere-315qx 

Signing Out of 2021

Hosts Sophia Chandrasekar and Galina Dronova end the year with a re-cap of the best of the 2021 and a look forward to what's coming in early 2022.

Is This the New Norm? Trends in Healthcare

Are you currently working in the laboratory wondering when the staff shortages end? Or maybe you're considering leaving the hospital/clinic workspace for another opportunity such as industry or IT? This podcast is for you. Host Galina speaks with Rick Panning, Senior Healthcare Consultant at ARUP Laboratories, about the state of healthcare today and how the major trends in the medical laboratory science field shape our daily life. More importantly, we discuss how we can be the change that moves the needle in a positive direction.
Take action! Learn how you can help lend your voice to address funding for medical laboratories: https://ascls.org/labvocate/

Halloween Episode: Lab Horror Stories

In this special Halloween episode Sophia and guest hosts Romy and Mackenzie read and react to medical laboratory horror stories submitted by Off the Bench listeners. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll be totally grossed out.
Please note: This episode contains graphic and potentially triggering things witnessed in the medical laboratory and hospital, including amputated limbs and maternal and child mortality.

10 Common Lab Deficiencies

In this episode produced by April Shields, graduate of the 2021 ASCLS Leadership Academy, Lucia Berte, MA, MT(ASCP)SBB, DLM, President of Laboratories Made Better! P.C., shares laboratory accreditation organizations' data on the most common deficiencies reported by their assessors. She also presents resources for reducing or eliminating deficiencies. The episode is available for one hour of P.A.C.E.® credit. Visit https://ascls.org/offthebench/ to learn how to earn credit. Free for ASCLS members ($10 for non-members). 

HLA Typing and Why It's Important

Hosts Justin Hanenberg and Galina Dronova find out how the HLA laboratories help clinical care teams monitor patient care for solid organ and hematopoietic cell transplants. Dr. Justin Kreuter, a clinical pathologist at Mayo Clinic, uses case studies to explain why HLA typing is important, as well as discusses the history and the future of the field.

The Science (and Art) of Home Brewing

This month, hosts Sophia Chandrasekar and Justin Hanenberg talk about microbiology and home brewing with Neva Parker from White Labs, a biotechnology company that provides liquid yeast cultures, analytical services, and consulting for the fermented beverage industry. Neva started at White Labs in 2003 as a lab technician and now serves as Director of Operations.

Teaching During COVID

Host Sophia Chandrasekar talks with Clinical Laboratory Science Student Gabbi Frimpong and Assistant Professor Lisa Cremeans, both at the the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Division of Clinical Laboratory Science, about how COVID has affected the medical laboratory science education system.