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Not a fan of training new hires? Lab finds a fix

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Valerie Neff Newitt

February 2019—When Tania Hong, BS, MT, joined the University of Vermont Medical Center five years ago, as network director of operations for pathology and laboratory medicine, she interviewed all of the supervisors in her laboratory. She asked what they saw as their biggest challenges.

“Every single person said training students and new hires was a large, looming concern,” Hong says. “Every single person. I knew we couldn’t ignore that.”

What came of that is the Lab Preceptor Program, now in its fourth year.

Technologists had to be given the tools they needed to be effective teachers to new hires and students who rotate through labs “and to increase their job satisfaction,” Hong says, “because this aspect of the job is never going away.” Though some medical technology schools in the country put educators into the laboratories in which students do their rotations, Hong notes, that is not the norm in many labs, including UVM Medical Center. “Students are handed over to us,” she says.

Hong

Preceptor programs for nurses are common, Hong says, but she was unable to find a similar program for laboratories. So four years ago she undertook the process of creating one. With a green light from UVM Medical Center administration and support from laboratory colleagues, Hong re-appropriated hours from various other positions in the lab and consolidated those hours into a full-time position for a laboratory educator who would help develop and run the new Lab Preceptor Program.

The first person to lead the program, Katrina Moreau, MAT, MLS, had previous teaching experience and knew there were various learning styles. She researched how learning varies from person to person and how teaching can and must be adapted to each person’s learning style. That understanding has become the heart of the program.

While Hong says teaching experience is a plus for the lab educator who leads the program, it is not a requirement. “The most important thing is to find someone passionate about teaching others, then give them the resources they need, possibly a temporary consultant at the program’s onset, to provide necessary materials.”

The lab educator is now Charles Gilroy, BS, who had worked previously in the medical center’s phlebotomy department. He was reluctant initially to take the position. “I had worked in patient care my entire career and was afraid I might be bored doing the same thing every day.” But his days are varied, he says. He teaches program workshop modules, interfaces with nursing educators, acts as a conduit between nursing and the laboratories, and provides educational outreach to nearby schools.

Gilroy

The Lab Preceptor Program consists of a four-hour workshop offered at various times of the day to accommodate most of the staff. “Ideally employees can take the training as part of their work shift,” so no overtime is needed. “There’s a get-to-know-you period,” Gilroy says, “followed by three main modules in which we concentrate on learning styles, communication, and assessment.”

Learning styles are taught using the VARK Modalities model (visual, auditory, read-write, kinesthetic). Students may skew more to one modality than the others, though overlap is expected. As workshop leader, Gilroy uses a VARK quiz to first determine participants’ learning styles, and to teach them how to do the same with the people they will eventually train at the bench.

“Visual learners need to see how a task is done first, often with help from graphs or diagrams, before being taught how to do it. Auditory learners listen intently to spoken directions and may do well at lectures or roundtables. Read-write learners prefer text-based instructions and take copious notes, and kinesthetic learners tend to learn by doing and are hands-on. Once we determine the style of learning,” Gilroy says, “we can adapt teaching methods to fit it.”

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