Medical Laboratory Profession Needs All Hands On Deck Approach to Build Future Workforce

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of a March 29, 2022 article that appeared in Critical Values online.

Innovative solutions to build the medical laboratory workforce are emerging, and that may help mitigate the critical shortage of workers that hospitals and laboratories are experiencing. 

Hospitals are interested in developing ways to help individuals who have degrees in the sciences, but no specific education or training in the medical or public health laboratory, become competent laboratory professionals with education and experience that enables them to become certified for work in the clinical laboratory. One viable option appears to be online training programs like the one that Weber State University, through a partnership with the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), began offering last fall. The program prepares students who have a bachelor's degree in a qualifying field, such as biology or microbiology, to qualify for the Technologist in Microbiology M(ASCP) certification exam from the ASCP Board of Certification via eligibility Route 3. Through the partnership, ASM promotes Weber State’s program on its website. The role of ASM is to encourage ASM members who work in clinical microbiology laboratories to open their laboratory to prospective online students who might later seek employment in their laboratory. Clinical laboratories might also encourage employees who perform pre-analytic tasks, but don’t have the specific training needed to perform the high complexity work of the testing benches to enroll in Weber State’s online certification program. 

ASCP Launches Workforce Steering Committee 
In an entirely separate approach, ASCP announced last month that it has established a Workforce Steering Committee to address the workforce pathway issues from a strategic approach. The committee’s task is to examine the Blueprint for Action, which was the result of an in-depth medical laboratory workforce study conducted by the University of Washington Center for Health Workforce Studies and ASCP. The Blueprint for Action identifies 12 potential workforce initiatives ASCP can work on; each fall into one of three areas: building visibility of the medical laboratory profession; retention and recruitment; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

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