Teaching Laboratory Management to Pathology Residents

Abstract

The article by Weiss and colleagues1 on a consensus curriculum for laboratory management training for pathology residents provides much useful information about a long-standing challenge. Their report states where we are as a field in laboratory medicine with regard to education on management issues. The data in the article now beg the answers to 2 questions: “What do we do with these answers?” and, more fundamentally, “What are we trying to achieve by teaching laboratory management to pathology residents?” Having been in the field of laboratory medicine as a clinical laboratory director for the past 26 years at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School (Boston), and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (Nashville, TN), I have made several attempts to develop for residents a management training program that is truly effective. A successful training experience would be one about which the residents are enthusiastic learners and from which they develop measurable management skills that are more than just common sense; and the program should stand the test of time by improving continuously year after year. In the time that I have been working in the field, I have developed with my colleagues a lecture series on management topics, a management rotation, brief projects related to clinical laboratory management, and even a lecture series in operations management taught by instructors from a local business college. For all the projects for which I can claim some measure of success in my career, none of my attempts to teach management to pathology residents has stood the test of time. I believe that the data collected by Weiss and colleagues1 help us understand this difficulty. My personal lack of success as a pathology educator on management training notwithstanding, there are many reports from those actively engaged in pathology …