Growing Our Own: Teaching and Doing Research in CLS

Abstract

The shortage of clinical laboratory scientists (CLS) has been well-documented in the healthcare environment. This growing concern only becomes more critical as we enter the retiring baby boomer era in our society. Concomitantly, the problem of addressing how university CLS programs recruit and retain faculty to teach and satisfy research agendas is not being studied. These two problems, if allowed to collide, will provide a "perfect storm" with serious implications for an ongoing shortage of personnel and overall quality for the profession. CLS faculty, in the university setting, must typically satisfy the three tenets for tenure and promotion -teaching, scholarship, and service. While teaching and service will always be critical, scholarship (research) is an area of expertise that must be "taught" and mentored for future CLS faculty to be successful in the very real arena of "publish or perish". This article provides a commentary with specific details associated with our experience in offering an evolving dedicated CLS clinical research course to purposively "grow our own" students in the art of conducting successful research. It offers a flexible template for adapting or incorporating a lecture and laboratory course to address theoretical and practical knowledge in the realm of clinical research. Additionally, a discussion of other research mentoring activities in our program will be outlined. The long term goal (and hope) of these program objectives is to build a culture of research for current faculty and for CLS graduates. This paper provides an approach to embedding these research ideals in all CLS graduates and, importantly, an intentional attempt to create a mindset for a possible career as a future CLS faculty member who can be successful in both the university and clinical environment.

Research in Clinical Laboratory Science: Professionals' Educational Preparation

“…Articles by Rohde et al and Saleh and Hamed in a recent supplement of Clinical Laboratory Science present curricular models for preparing students to be both analytical consumers and producers of research in the profession. 5,6 The authors recognize the limitations of this study. First, a 7% response rate may appear insignificant and may provide a narrow perspective.…”

Sector switching among histopathologists in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: a qualitative study

“…The shortage of histopathologists is a growing problem, both globally and nationally [1-7]. Empirical work on labour market mobility in the health care sector is dominated by studies of clinical health practitioners, while there is a dearth of empirical work on local labour market mobility of South African medical laboratory specialists.…”

Students as Vital Participants in Research Projects

“…2 While teaching and service are two tenets of successful faculty outcomes (e.g., on August 11 2020 http://hwmaint.clsjournal.ascls.org/ Downloaded from promotion, tenure), the third element of scholarship is an area of expertise that needs to be taught to CLS students. 3 Future CLS practitioners and professors need to receive research mentoring so they will be successful in the "publish or perish" world. There has been interest stated to "grow our own" students able to be CLS professionals, practitioners and faculty serving in capacities of teaching, service and research/scholarship.…”

“…There has been interest stated to "grow our own" students able to be CLS professionals, practitioners and faculty serving in capacities of teaching, service and research/scholarship. 3 Grooming CLS students in research is an important addition to the critical, analytical and interpretive skills currently taught. The research component better prepares CLS graduates for graduate schools, careers in pharmaceuticals and industry and professional degrees such as medicine and dentistry, all of which are career paths chosen by some CLS degree holders.…”

“…Indeed, more so than ever in this current economic environment, clinical laboratories focus on attributes of efficiency and leanness and delay projects requiring research and development. Given the predicted and current CLS workforce shortage, 3,8,9 the possibility exists that even more focused efficiency and leanness will become the norm. Indeed, efficient utilization of personnel and prohibition of performance of projects deemed nonessential is becoming a common work ethic.…”