Volume 39 Number 2 | April 2025
Sarah Bergbower, DCLS, MLS(ASCP)CM, ASCLS Today Volunteer Contributor
I now realize that as an educator, I am in a unique position. I do not teach in a clinical laboratory sciences program, nor am I associated with such a program in any way. I therefore heavily debated whether attending the Clinical Laboratory Educators Conference (CLEC) would benefit me. I am a tenured faculty within the Life Sciences Department, possessing a Master of Science in biology that emphasized genetics research, and a 200-level general microbiology course is the closest thing to a clinical laboratory-related course I currently teach.
I didn’t think my role in biology courses was impactful to the laboratory’s visibility. It wasn’t until speaking with our ASCLS president-elect at our ASCLS-Illinois meeting in fall 2023 that I discovered that the broader biology departments at colleges and universities may sometimes be at odds with MLT/MLS specific programs. This can certainly be a confounding factor in visibility for our clinical laboratory profession.
What am I doing—where I am—to promote visibility of the clinical laboratory profession?
I teach a plethora of biology courses, ranging from biology for non-majors to microbiology. But even in my general biology course, I can make subtle references to duties performed or knowledge possessed by medical laboratory professionals. A recent pandemic has nicely opened the conversation for understanding PCR in our biotechnology chapter. I regularly make references between possible test results and our biology topics of cellular respiration, biochemistry and macromolecules, genetics, eukaryotic and prokaryotic cellular structure and organelles, and more. Endorsing our profession doesn’t stop with undergraduates. During my DCLS training, I was able to lean heavily into this same background to draw reminders of biological workings in educational presentations to my team of residents and fellows in internal medicine, cardiology, and infectious disease.
Microbiology is a favorite course to teach, especially the laboratory portion, because that’s where I can display my MLS experiences and help draw connections from my bench tech days for my prospective nursing or pre-med students. I have come to understand in teaching microbiology to my pre-nursing students that this may be the only microbiology course that they complete as an ADN RN. I have also come to understand that I may be their first interaction with a medical laboratory scientist. My class has become tailored to highlight actual experiences and examples of lab/nursing interaction. My hope is that these future nurses come to see the laboratory as a valuable resource and ally in patient care.
I designed a bulletin board located in one of the primary hallways of the college with a title that proclaims, “What’s Wrong with this Picture? What a Medical Laboratory Scientist Sees.” The bulletin board features microscopic images from peripheral smears, sputum, urines, and more with a lab report below created to mimic the comments and observations made by the laboratory professional. Phrases such as, “2+ basophilic stippling” and “many polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN),” are handwritten in the mock reports’ blanks above a diagnosis. The bulletin board is meant to draw interest and connections between the medical field and the science courses offered at the college, as well as introduce clinical laboratory science as a healthcare occupation students may not have considered.
Laboratorians hold a wealth of knowledge, which is in fact the foundation for the development, implementation, and interpretation of testing, and this knowledge is meant to be shared in whatever niche we currently occupy and in whatever manner is applicable. What are ways that you can promote visibility of the clinical laboratory profession right where you are?
Sarah Bergbower is Associate Professor of Life Sciences at IECC Olney Central College in Olney, Illinois.
Author Sarah Bergbower teaches a plethora of biology courses, ranging from biology for non-majors to microbiology. She promotes visibility of the clinical laboratory profession by making references to duties performed or knowledge possessed by medical laboratory professionals in all her courses.