Multilingual and Native English‐speaking Student Writers in Medical Laboratory Sciences (MLS): A Comparative Pilot Study.

Abstract

Medical laboratory scientists are health care practitioners who perform testing on blood and other body fluids providing vital information to physicians for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of patients in health and disease. Miscommunications between laboratory personnel and other health care practitioners can result in unwarranted delays in patient care or errors in treatment selection, which ultimately could cause patient harm, including the possible loss of life. In spite of prerequisite writing course requirements, students in our laboratory science baccalaureate degree program struggled to reach the program’s writing competencies. The situation in our program was complicated by the high percentage of multilingual students with varying abilities in English. This pilot study was initiated to describe the nature of writing in our field of practice and to analyze the current status of student writing abilities. A survey of writing activities among current laboratory science practitioners confirmed the essential nature of writing in our field and the types of writing activities performed on a regular basis. Analysis of current student writing samples showed that both native-English speaking and multilingual student writers made essentially the same types of errors although the multilingual students made significantly more errors in some categories.