www.ijmse.com International Journal of Medical Science and Education pISSN- 2348 4438 | eISSN-2349- 3208 Published by Association for Scientific and Medical Education (ASME) Int.J.Med.Sci.Educ. May-June. 2020; 7(4) : 1-4 Available Online at www.ijmse.com Editorial Page 1 CRITICAL LOOK AT CHALLENGES IN THE MEDICAL LABORATORY SCIENCE TRAINING IN THE WORKPLACE Dr. Reza Mortazavi 1* 1. Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, Australia Email id – reza.mortazavi@canberra.edu.au Received: 24/08/2020 Revised:26/08/2020 Accepted: 28/08/2020 INTRODUCTION Medical (diagnostic) laboratories are essential for effective prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Competent and resourceful laboratory staffs (medical laboratory scientists, technical officers, phlebotomists, and pathologists) are key performers in the pathology industry. In some areas of the world, such as Australia and North America the laboratory workforce in general is becoming older, and there are challenges in finding competent young laboratory scientists to replace them upon retirement (1, 2). A medical laboratory science course needs to have a placement component (also called clinical practicum or internship) integrated into its curriculum (3). The students of such programs, after a period of undertaking on-campus education and learning the theories and pre-requisite practical skills, are placed in the real-world medical laboratories where they learn the entry-level professional skills and values under the supervision of experienced laboratory staff (4). As examples for the entry-level professional skills, I am referring to Units 1 to 6 in Table 1, which is the Competency-based Standards for Medical Scientists in Australia prepared by the Pathology Associations Council, Australia (5). Accordingly, there is a shared responsibility on the higher education system (universities and vocational institutions) and the pathology industry (teaching clinical laboratories) to help meet these educational requirements by providing quality training to the students. However, there are many obstacles and challenges in the field, which I am going to explore in this article and provide relevant solutions: The obstacles and challenges Currently, many medical laboratory science programs are dealing with numerous challenges that may negatively impact on the quality of the education and competency of the graduates. The types and scales of those challenges may vary from country to country, or from region to region. In this editorial article, it is not possible to cover all the issues pertinent to the medical laboratory science programs globally or even in a specific geographic area; rather I would like to focus on some common, but generally less discussed issues, which can be common in many countries. I will also provide some solutions. 1. Limitations of the curriculum An up-to-date and professionally oriented university curriculum plays a key role in preparing the students for the industry. One of the problems, is that there are many universities that either are running generic types of biomedical science programs claiming that they are providing workforce to the pathology industry, or are offering very specialised courses (e.g. biotechnology courses) which do not have sufficient clinical perspective to meet the pathology industry’s general requirements. Whilst the graduates of these less-pathology-oriented programs could be very successful in meeting specific needs of select research or pathology laboratories/ departments (e.g. biotechnology or molecular genetics laboratories), their graduates will probably not obtain the comprehensive entry-level attributes required by the industry (1).