Train the Trainer: A Tool for Retention

ABSTRACT

Although many institutions make it the responsibility of their laboratory staff to train medical laboratory technician (MLT) and medical laboratory science (MLS) students, few provide their staff with sufficient resources and training to do so. This is part of the reason some staff may consider training students a secondary task or may feel lost in how to best teach a younger student with no experience. This disparity must be corrected to ensure that staff scientists can perform as confident, effective mentors and students can receive comprehensive practical training. Preparing staff to train students can also lead to greater job satisfaction for staff as well as a better education for students. To address these issues, a workshop was created to provide staff with resources on training students, covering both theoretical material (learning styles, teaching to different learning styles, differences in MLT and MLS curricula) and workflow topics (suggested off-bench activities, tasks requiring supervision, roles of the clinical liaison vs clinical rotation supervisors). A questionnaire will be completed by all employees involved with training MLT/MLS student interns at 3 time points: before the workshop, after the workshop before a cohort of students begin rotating, and after the cohort finishes rotations. Questionnaire responses will be recorded using a Likert scale to assess employees’ confidence working with students at the bench, their knowledge and understanding of the affiliated programs, and laboratory student-related processes.