ASCP Basic Medical Laboratory Skills Package Bolsters Training for New Hires and Students

Faced with a growing workforce shortage, many laboratory directors nationwide are hiring new employees who may  need guidance on foundational laboratory literacy.  

“Many new hires come in with various levels of knowledge and recall about working in the clinical laboratory. It requires time for laboratory directors and preceptors to train them,” says Kristen Pesavento, EdD, MS, MLS(ASCP)CMMBCM, graduate program director of Medical Laboratory Science, Loyola University Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health. “It is even harder for laboratories in rural settings to hire people to fill vacancies and reinforce these basic concepts. The current workforce gap is not just affecting clinical laboratories, but also public health laboratories that are trying to keep up with the demand for testing.”  

To support laboratories and scientists or technicians facing this challenge, ASCP has launched the ASCP Basic Medical Laboratory Skills training package —free virtual education that equips laboratory professionals and future laboratory professionals with foundational skills for working in a medical laboratory.   

This set of six eLearning courses was developed with funding through ASCP’s Cooperative Agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in service of the CDC’s OneLabTM initiative. The six-part series can be taken as an entire package or as individual eLearning courses.  

Members of the ASCP Workforce Steering Committee developed the basic curriculum for this education; individual eLearning courses were developed by numerous ASCP member subject matter experts who hold active medical laboratory roles.    

“The series offers six modules created by ASCP to provide a primer for essential skills, or to serve as a refresher for those already working in the laboratory,” explains Dr. Pesavento, who created the laboratory mathematics and the basic operations of laboratory equipment courses.    

Course topics address laboratory safety, laboratory terminology, laboratory math, basic operations of laboratory equipment, routine procedures, and quality control. The series is available in the ASCP Store and provides 1.0 CMLE credit per course.  

Dr. Pesavento says the workforce shortage was already occurring before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. As generations of laboratory professionals naturally reached retirement age or sought to leave health care, the demand for scientists and technicians has only increased.   

Though intended to help onboard hires new to the clinical laboratory, this training package would also be ideal for other members of the healthcare team looking to learn core principles of the clinical laboratory, refresher trainings for in-service lab team members, program directors interested in leveraging the course content to supplement their existing training programs, and international laboratory scientists wanting to build additional exposure and confidence in core clinical laboratory concepts in English.   

“If you are working in a clinical laboratory, your work impacts lives. People working in the laboratory need to understand why they are doing certain things, and the ASCP Basic Medical Laboratory Skills series helps to remind us of the fundamental theories behind the testing,” Dr. Pesavento says.   

Access the ASCP Basic Medical Laboratory Skills here.