Introducing high school students to the clinical lab - includes syllabus for lab internship program, guidelines for conducting sessions, checklist for instructors in preparing each session

Medical Laboratory Observer, Jan, 1991 by Nancy J. Konopka

Four years ago, when the internship director at a local high school contacted our laboratory about introducing students to clinical laboratory science, we were intrigued. The proposal fit in with the community involvement that administrators of our 200-bed hospital had been encouraging.

In preliminary meetings following administration approval, the internship director clarified the general goals of the program. These goals helped us establish guidelines for the program, which we called "An Introduction to the Clinical Laboratory. "

The director selected two senior students with an interest in health science to take part in the program. The decision to hold the number to two, so that the students would get enough attention from our limited staff, was made by the laboratory manager.

Recognizing this as an unusual teaching opportunity, laboratory staff members volunteered to serve as instructors for the program's six sessions on blood banking, hematology, microbiology, chemistry, cytology/histology, and urinalysis. I undertook the responsibilities of program coordinator, working with the instructors to plan sessions. We went over topics and procedures, preparation of reading materials, and scheduling.

Before the program began, the students received a syllabus (Figure 1). Sessions ranging from two to eight hours-some of them spread over two or three days were to be conducted on alternate weeks for 12 weeks.

Days and times varied according to the availability of the instructor and the workload of the laboratory section. Since the students were excused from high school classes during their internship, scheduling variations in laboratory sessions insured that the same classes were not repeatedly missed.

I wrote out a checklist to assist instructors in their preparations for the course and to keep the sessions uniform in structure (Figure 11). Twenty- to 30-minute lectures were developed for each session, with the remainder of the time to be spent on student performance of lab procedures.

Instructors received guidelines for conducting the laboratory sessions (Figure 111). They were encouraged to enliven the presentations by using such teaching aids as microscopic slides, posters, and diagrams.

Reading assignments included selections from laboratory textbooks, journal articles, notes and handouts from technologists' student years, and some material that was written by the instructors specifically for the internship program. Simple definitions were written for medical terminology that might be unfamiliar to students. Procedures, often adapted from current manuals, were written for each session. Here, too, we kept in mind that the terminology, as well as the equipment and environment, would be entirely new to these young interns.

Reading assignments, handouts, and medical terminology sheets were made available to both students two weeks before a session was to begin. This allowed them ample time to become familiar with the material, even though they often had to share a textbook or a journal.

The program was designsed to provide the students with as much hands-on experience as possible. Techniques such as pipetting and inoculation of media were demonstrated and practiced before being used in procedures.

The students were introduced to the laboratory's safety and infection control policies. At the time we started the program, in 1986, our hospital did not have a policy about protective apparel other than laboratory coats. Students who have participated since that first year have been required to wear gloves for all laboratory procedures..

To minimize the risk of contracting bloodborne diseases, the students performed tests on unknowns made from standards and on their own blood. A discussion followed of each test result that had been obtained in class and its implications.

At the conclusion of the program, we distributed evaluation forms to the students and the instructors. We asked the students how well the program fulfilled the goals stated in the syllabus, and we asked instructors to comment on the organization of the program as a whole. Suggestions for improvement were also solicited from both groups.

In addition, the internship director requested lab evaluations of the students' performance and attitudes. Their high school grades for the internship were based on these evaluations and on papers they wrote about the program.

From their comments, we learned that the students had had difficulty with the technical level of the reading material, even with the help of medical terminology sheets. Most publications intended for the laboratory are written with the assumption that readers have had at least several college courses.

To solve this problem, we decided to write more of our own material, using the students' reading assignments as references. We also prepared a job description sheet that explained each staff member's duties in the laboratory. Our students have greatly appreciated both steps.

The students especially enjoyed the hands-on emphasis of the program and said they would strongly recommend it to others. One student from the first course went on to major in biology in college. The other student, however, felt faint when she had her blood specimen collected and when performing gross examinations of pathology specimens. She later decided that a career in health science was not for her.