Volume 39 Number 5 | October 2025
Summary
Galina Dronova shares a personal story of overextending herself with extra work until it affected her wellbeing, teaching her the importance of recognizing limits. She offers practical advice for laboratory professionals: create balance, give yourself grace, delegate or say no, and invest in yourself. Advocating for personal growth ensures resilience, fulfillment, and better patient outcomes.
Galina Dronova, EMBA, MLS(ASCP), ASCLS Today Volunteer Contributor
On a not particularly cold February, I found myself unhappy. I felt that I had more capacity to be useful to the world, even though I was already employed, volunteering, growing relationships, etc. In the imagined free time I had, I picked up another part time project. This change quickly came to mean that my morning wake-up rituals were gone. No more yoga. No more luxuriously cuddling with the dogs. It also meant early bedtimes and working weekends. The small “to dos” I took for granted disappeared quickly: grocery shopping, fitness, cooking, spending evenings with loved ones. And yet, I reminded myself this was temporary.
What I learned over the next few months was that it’s fine to take on extra tasks, but eventually you may reach the boundary that pushes against your mental health. The extra work hours added to my plate contributing to a greater good simultaneously took away pieces that made me “me.” The unfortunate thing about learning your limits is that often you must reach them to know what they are.
Shamefully, I departed my extra-curricular contribution to the world a few short months later. I had never truly felt the idiom, “a weight off my shoulders,” as much as I did in that moment.
The benefit of learning my limit is that I learned what I’m capable of and when to say no, thank you. I also learned that if I can wake up at 3:30 am to show up for a short-term project across the world, I can do the same to show up for myself and my local community. I also learned that my limit of tolerance is pretty darn high; it’s just a matter of how I use the space within that limit.
“Advocating for positive patient outcomes starts with you advocating for yourself.”
Whether you are a new laboratory leader trying to manage a team while maintaining managerial deliverables, or you are working the bench and coming home too exhausted to tackle personal goals (or that pile of dishes), here is an actionable list of what I learned from learning my limits.
- Create Balance
You are a leader and/or subject matter expert (SME) in your field, even when you may not hold an official management title. You’ve proven yourself worthy of expertise to step into a role where patients, laboratory cohorts, and care teams will seek your input on issues, projects, and/or strategic direction. Learn to balance your schedule of addressing other people’s needs vs. spending time working on work that you are responsible for.
As a medical laboratory SME, you are called to be both a content creator (e.g., developing/auditing procedures) AND a problem solver (e.g., departmental requests for KPI data or tracking down a missing irretrievable specimen). Thankfully, Outlook allows you to “Book focus time” on your calendar, which will make it easy to go on “Do not disturb” mode and silence all computer-based requests while you produce meaningful work. Discuss your scheduled Focus time with your one up leader during a 1:1 so they are aware of your strategy and can support your “you” time as additional requests come up.
- Give Yourself Grace
Our mind tends to fixate on the 1 percent we do wrong and ignore the 99 percent we do right (officially termed negativity bias). The stress from focusing on what you did wrong will likely affect the rest of your work and emotional balance needed to tackle new challenges. Keep a monthly list of all the projects, procedures, and optimizations you were successfully a part of and make sure to list these wins in your annual review. If leading a team, create an end of year slide deck for the team to celebrate their accomplishments. Remember: you are your biggest advocate. If you don’t build yourself up, who will? Dust off that LinkedIn profile and be proud of the contribution you are making to the medical laboratory field and positive patient outcomes!
- Delegate Tasks or Say No
Much easier said than done, right? If we sought out a leadership role, it is because we believe in the mission, vision, and values of our organization, and we want to be an active participant in helping achieve the organizational goals. As active participants in the laboratory community (which again is not determined by title but by you reading articles such as this), we also likely have a drive to demonstrate our capability in the job description we took on. We will likely say “yes” to a lot of projects and tasks in our career, sometimes all at once.
However, if we spend too much time functioning at over capacity by juggling too many plates, we are bound to drop one. If you have a hard time saying no, eventually you will learn what your limit is and will naturally pivot yourself to a better-balanced workday. Alternatively, know when and to whom to delegate tasks to—you may not be the expert on a topic, but luckily you are surrounded by other SMEs who are!
- Invest in Yourself
Sure, your VP or lab director may schedule quarterly off-site meetings to get all the leaders together, and your workplace might provide CE earning lunch and learns. However, I encourage you to advocate for your personal growth, because only you know what educational needs will help you flourish in your career. Meet with your leader to request in-person conference attendance reimbursement, or learn a new skillset valuable to your role that may result in additional certification. Proactive conversations asking for this may be hard, but what’s the worst that can happen? Remember, by not asking at all, the answer is already “no.”
Advocating for positive patient outcomes starts with you advocating for yourself. Being your greatest spokesperson creates a safe work environment and ensures a long-term resiliency to all the emergencies that may arise in our field. Let this season be a reflection on what parts you hold that may be exceeding your limits and inadvertently misdirecting you away from your place, purpose, and people.
Galina Dronova is Clinical Laboratory Development Specialist at M Health Fairview in Minneapolis, Minnesota.