In Today’s Workforce, Health Systems Train Their Own Future Laboratory Professionals

Cultivating the medical laboratory workforce of the future is on everyone’s minds these days and some health systems are taking matters into their own hands. Boston Children’s Hospital has a well-established internship in its pathology laboratory for young people, and Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, has established its own School of Phlebotomy. 

“We are creating our own farm team,” jokes John Baci, Executive Director of Pathology at Boston Children's Hospital, who launched the internship program for the hospital's pathology department more than a decade ago. “For most of these interns, they did not know these careers in pathology and laboratory medicine existed when they came here,” he says. 

Boston Children’s is one of several health systems that have various programs to encourage young people to explore careers in health care. 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, presented by ASCP. 
 
Another example of a health system that is seeking to develop its own future laboratory professionals is Geisinger Medical Center, in Danville, PA. In addition to taking part in twice-yearly career fairs at area high schools, it has also established the Geisinger School of Phlebotomy. 

“For the career fairs, we have multiple classrooms set up here at Geisinger,” says Terri McElhattan, MHA, MT(HEW), CLA(ASCP), PBT(ASCP), CPI(ACA), program director and instructor of the Geisinger School of Phlebotomy. “Students see us in the laboratory, and they attend the nursing, respiratory therapy, Cath Lab, or radiology sessions during Career Day at our hospital.  

The phlebotomy program began in 2009 with two 15-week classes, one at Geisinger’s facility in the northeast part of Pennsylvania and the other at its Danville campus. “The idea was to fill the vacancies we were seeing in our phlebotomists at Geisinger,” Ms. McElhattan says.  

She began the program with Dave Gingrich, PBT(ASCP), associate vice president of operations for the customer support team in Geisinger’s laboratory. They created a structured program where participants not only learned the art of blood collection, but also laboratory regulations and other aspects of how the laboratory operates.   
Geisinger’s phlebotomy program has expanded to several other hospital sites within its overall system.

On April 1, it graduated 17 students from the phlebotomy program and 13 had already accepted positions. Some will take receiving and processing positions, and almost all have accepted jobs within the Geisinger system.   

A health system does not need a lot of money to build a program like Boston Children’s, but it does need motivation, manpower, and commitment from the senior leadership on down to the department chairs and mentors within the department. Check out the May issue of Critical Values to learn more about how these two health systems are successfully cultivating the future generation of laboratory professionals.

To read more articles from this issue of ePolicy, click here. To learn more about ePolicy News and access past newsletters and articles, click here.