Volume 40 Number 5 | October 2026
Summary

In this article, Jordan Achenbach examines burnout and resilience in laboratory medicine, emphasizing that resilience is shaped by workplace culture, not individual effort alone. She advocates for supportive leadership, mentorship, psychological safety, and open conversations about mental health, arguing that investing in employee wellbeing strengthens laboratory performance, scientific excellence, and patient care.

Sparking Resilience in a Changing Lab Culture

Jordan Achenbach, MLT(ASCP)CM, Volunteer Contributor

Jordan AchenbachBehind every critical patient diagnosis stands a workforce that many patients never see. Medical laboratory professionals faced extraordinary staffing shortages, testing demands, and emotional strain during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet their experiences often remained invisible to the public. The largest problem continues to be staffing shortages; less staff leads to longer hours, increased workload, and less support, which can ultimately lead to burnout. Medical laboratory scientists are not exempt from these challenges. On the contrary, due to the hidden nature of our work I feel we may have been one of the most impacted professions.

Burnout has become a buzzword these days, for good reason. In psychology, burnout is a state of severe emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by prolonged, unmanaged stress. Sound familiar? This is something I have personally dealt with, and I’m sure the readers of this article have as well. Some days, it felt like I was just trying to keep myself afloat. The pandemic worsened these issues but also brought them to the forefront. While we are all eager to move on and get back to business as usual, we can’t forget what we’ve lost, and we need to reflect on what we’ve learned. None of us would have chosen to live through a pandemic, but it offered lessons we can’t afford to ignore—the biggest of these lessons being resilience.

“The future of laboratory medicine depends not only on scientific excellence but also on workplaces where laboratory professionals can thrive.”

Resilience is often discussed as an individual responsibility, but it is built through workplace culture. Building resilience is not about enduring endless stress; it is about learning how to reset, recalibrate, and protect your mind in a high-demand career. This isn’t all on you, though; it’s the job of leadership to set guidelines and boundaries, encourage strong mentoring relationships, and promote a safe and collaborative lab culture.

An inclusive design should be used when developing lab guidelines; there is no average laboratory scientist, and failing to recognize different abilities and needs is a surefire way to lead to underperformance. Different abilities and needs do not include just physical health conditions, but mental health conditions as well.

Personally, I deal with a hefty amount of anxiety. While I have my own toolbox on how to handle this condition, my leadership has helped immensely and allows me to thrive. We have monthly check-ins, where the first question is always centered around how we’re mentally and physically feeling, and whether our workload feels manageable. This allows us to set boundaries, so we have less chance of leading to burnout.

Relationships between colleagues in the lab are also extremely important; colleagues often provide some of our strongest support. A mentor-mentee relationship between a more experienced scientist and a scientist just starting out has several benefits, including giving the mentor a sense of purpose and the mentee the support needed to flourish in their career.

Unfortunately, these relationships aren’t always so positive; leadership is essential in fostering a culture where laboratory scientists develop the interpersonal and communication skills necessary for meaningful mentorship. One mentor alone is unlikely to fill all the mentees’ needs, so it’s important for the mentee to be able to be comfortable and competent in reaching out to several people to find necessary support.

For the above to be possible, creating a safe lab environment and collaborative culture is important. Safety is particularly important; on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety is second only to physiological needs. There are numerous components to safety, such as physical safety, psychological safety, safety from harassment and discrimination, safety to make mistakes and learn from them, and safety to ask questions and raise concerns.

Focusing on a culture that supports these types of safety allows lab members to reach their full potential. This allows for a collaborative culture to emerge, in which colleagues have established connections and don’t feel overly competitive which each other. Opportunities for collaboration further build camaraderie and strengthen the science we work so diligently with each day.

Laboratories, whether they be in an academic hospital, outpatient facility, or research institution, must work to better support the mental wellbeing of their employees. Supporting the wellbeing of laboratory scientists isn’t simply an investment in employees; it’s an investment in safer laboratories, stronger science, and better patient care. Due to increased productivity, there is also added economic benefit of leadership investing in the mental well-being of employees; something they are likely to look at when implementing ideas to better support mental health.

Discussions about mental health becoming commonplace in the lab and other prosocial behaviors help to reduce everyday stressors and improve overall mood. The future of laboratory medicine depends not only on scientific excellence but also on workplaces where laboratory professionals can thrive. By investing in resilience through supportive leadership, meaningful mentorship, and psychologically safe cultures, we strengthen not only ourselves but also the patients who rely on us every day.

References

Jordan Achenbach is a Medical Laboratory Scientist III in the Infectious Disease Diagnostics Laboratory at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.