ASCP 2018: Build the Perfect Laboratory Team through Motivation, Training, and Competency Assessment

By Erika Montoya, MLS(ASCP)^CM and Christina Bazanele-Sabatka, MLS(ASCP)^CM

In today’s professional workforce, the need for strong leaders, supervisors, and employees is great. This course, The Tools of Success: Build the Perfect Laboratory Team through Motivation, Training, and Competency Assessment will offer insightful tools and techniques that will keep Laboratory Professionals engaged and motivated to strive in learning, helping, and being part of a successful and evolving team.

This course will offer assistance to laboratory leadership in developing the best personal skill set in order to empower and cultivate an environment that promotes effective teamwork and confidence amongst Laboratory Professionals. Through motivation, encouragement, and proper training, leaders within the laboratory have the ability to create teams made of confident Laboratory Professionals that feel appreciated being in an inclusive versus an exclusive environment. A laboratory department that promotes a teamwork mindset and sets the expectation for compliance and standardization, gives employees the confidence needed to be part of this evolving environment within the laboratory. Being part of a strong team contributes to a sense of overall worth and inclusiveness. By providing employees the tools to be successful through proper training and competency assessments, laboratory leadership can sculpt their team to reach new levels; giving the laboratory staff the ability to reach and maintain excellence within the laboratory and provide exceptional patient care.

Constant changing standards with regulatory agencies require that clinical laboratories maintain an open mindset to consistently improve processes. Having a strong foundation for laboratory staff in training and competency provides standardization within the lab resulting in consistent processes which helps reduce the risk of errors.  Developing a training program for your laboratory’s interdepartmental processes will help cultivate and solidify a set of confident employees within your team.

Competency Assessments ensure compliance and standardization, giving overall quality assurance to the laboratory. Throughout this presentation, we will work together to form the foundations of a successful competency assessment program that will fit the needs of today’s medical laboratory. This course will provide tools, job aides, documentation, and flowcharts on how to achieve and maintain a successful competency assessment program.

Using team motivation, training, and competency assessments, these tools of success will guide laboratory leadership to form the foundation for a constantly evolving team within clinical laboratories.  

To learn about the ASCP 2018 Annual Meeting’s more than 250 hours of cutting edge education, click here.

Erika Montoya, MLS(ASCP)^CM, quality assurance specialist, is passionate about achieving a higher level of excellence in the laboratory by constantly educating medical professionals to improve and standardize processes in the laboratory to ensure the highest level of quality assurance is maintained.

Christina Bazanele-Sabatka, MLS(ASCP)^CM, laboratory administrator at Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, CO, believes in empower laboratory professionals to promote shared leadership through learning, helping, and being part of a successful and evolving team.