Innovative Approaches to Raising Laboratory Visibility

As laboratory professionals face recruitment struggles and workforce shortages, it’s more critical than ever to find creative ways to raise the field’s visibility and attract new talent. 

Critical Values spoke with two laboratory leaders who have developed unique training programs that are successfully bringing in new talent and easing staffing woes. These professionals are not only innovating inside the laboratory, they’re also actively engaging with high school and middle school students outside the laboratory as well. Their work is building a foundation that will benefit the laboratory profession for decades to come.

Recruiting pediatric phlebotomists from the local community

Elizabeth Margolskee, MD, MPH, Medical Director of the Hematology Laboratory and attending hematopathologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), is collaborating with local Philadelphia organizations to recruit and train individuals in pediatric phlebotomy.

She was motivated to launch this initiative after learning that traditional phlebotomy training programs only include about 30 minutes of pediatric blood draw instruction — far less than what’s needed to work at CHOP. 

“When phlebotomists come here, we’re already having to re-educate them,” Dr. Margolskee says. “So why not just own the whole process from the beginning and build our own training program?”

She developed an eight-week pediatric phlebotomy program at CHOP that lets students earn about $15 an hour while they’re training. Dr. Margolskee also partnered with The Skills Initiative to recruit community members and collaborated with Philly Works to secure government funding that covers half of each student’s tuition cost.

“The people in the program are really enjoying it,” Dr. Margolskee says. “And we found that when we look at their performance — like hemolysis and clotting — they perform better than people we hire from the traditional route.” 

In addition to the training program, CHOP is also partnering with a local high school to teach students about laboratory careers. 

“It’s vital for the survival of our profession to be reaching out,” Dr. Margolskee says. 

Expanding laboratory career pathways through innovative apprenticeships

Mike Baron, MBA, MS, C(ASCP), executive director of clinical laboratory operations at Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratories (WDL), created a non-traditional apprenticeship program for people with four-year science degrees who aren’t yet certified laboratory professionals.

Mr. Baron’s inspiration came from the unique way his own laboratory career got started. 

“I started in the laboratory going on 34 years ago through a program at Rockford Memorial,” he says. “They hired me in with a bachelor’s degree. The medical director did the classroom instruction while I was taught at the bench doing competency. After a year of that experience, I was able to get certified.”

When WDL was struggling with staffing, he remembered how well the approach had worked for him and decided to try something similar.

Mr. Baron hired a trainer to work with WDL’s medical directors and build a curriculum from the ground up. Hired trainees are expected to get their first certification in chemistry or hematology within a year (but no longer than 30 months.) 

WDL has further established this program and offers similar avenues for microbiology and molecular certifications. They created a program for pathology and are developing team members for HT (Histotechnicians) and HTL (Histotechnologists.) 

When he first started the apprentice program, he experienced pushback from laboratory professionals, Mr. Baron says.

“I had some really negative naysayers who said it wasn’t going to work,” he says. “But now it’s accepted. A lot of labs are really struggling with staffing shortages. And the things I’ve been doing have shown how successful we are—we have a full staff in our lab.”