Erika Figueroa returned to her home in Massachusetts at the end of her junior year in college when a chance encounter with her friend’s father inadvertently put her on a career path she never imagined. Her friend’s dad, John Baci, MBA, is the director of pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He asked Erika, a biology major, about her career plans.
At the time, Erika was not sure about her career path. Mr. Baci invited her to do a month-long summer internship at the hospital. She accepted, and loved every bit of this eye-opening experience during her month-long internship, which occurred several years ago.
“I shadowed a pathologists’ assistant and histotechs, who walked me through their cases, and I got to see them gross specimens,” says Ms. Figueroa, who is now completing her second year of training to become a pathologists’ assistant. “An internship is extremely beneficial for anyone who is curious about a field, but might not have a direction yet. It’s important to get a foot in the door.”
Ms. Figueroa is among many young adults who participated in the Pathology Department’s internship program at Boston Children’s Hospital who have gone on to pursue careers in laboratory medicine, pathology or other areas of health care.
“We are creating our own farm team,” jokes Mr. Baci, who launched the internship program for Boston Children’s Pathology Department more than a decade ago.
Cultivating the medical laboratory workforce of the future is on everyone’s minds these days, regardless of industry. Baby boomers are retiring in droves. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many healthcare workers to the brink of exhaustion, and many boomers are now retiring sooner than anticipated.
ASCP has invited Mr. Baci and several of his Boston Children’s colleagues to speak about their internship program and other workforce initiatives on June 12 in Boston, during the keynote session of
KnowledgeLab 2022, a conference presented by ASCP in Boston.
Mr. Baci emphasizes the importance of getting laboratory and medical staff, as well as senior leadership at an institution on board. “We send emails to the department staff in the spring and ask if they need any work done that the student interns could perform,” he explains. “A lot of it is filing slides or organizing. But our interns also get to spend face to face time with experts. We let the students attend department lectures when physicians were presenting, and they got to interact with Harvard professors. We immerse them in our culture for as long as they were here.”
As industries eagerly vie to lure young people into their professions, more are reaching out to the students when they are young and exploring various career opportunities. “We have a very grassroots program,” Mr. Baci says. “If a department my size can generate 15 to 20 professional laboratory professionals over five years, someone with a larger department can do even more.”
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www.ascp.org/knowledgelab.
