Professor Angela Xuereb continued her article (first part appeared last Sunday) published in the IHC Annual report by reviewing aspects of practical training, postgraduate work, and the accreditation of the course in Medical Laboratory Science (MLS).
Practical Training of B.Sc. MLS students takes place in the pathology laboratories at St Luke's Hospital. Here the students train in the six main laboratories of the Pathology Department: haematology, clinical chemistry, medical microbiology and virology, cellular pathology and cytology, immunology and transfusion medicine.
Practical placement is by rotation. Students spend six months in each of the main sections of the pathology laboratories. Demonstrators who are currently working in the pathology laboratories are actively involved in the supervision of students undergoing training during the practical component of the course work.
Log-books, in which all the analytical procedures are recorded, and the theoretical background to each method of analysis explained, are presented by the students at the end of the six-month placement in one of the pathology laboratories. Signed log-book entries are made by the demonstrators, as and when competence in a particular method itemised on the check-list is achieved by the student.
The log-books are then assessed by the consultant pathologists or scientific officers, who are all permanent part-time members of the lecturing staff of the University's Department of Pathology.
A new general teaching laboratory at the IHC became fully functional last October. This has helped to relieve the need for the hospital laboratories to accommodate the first-year students for teaching purposes.
The basic techniques are taught by demonstrators in this laboratory before students are given their practical placements in the hospital laboratories.
Since there is close liaison with the hospital's Department of Pathology, employer feedback is provided by the active involvement of University lecturers, who are also hospital consultant pathologists, and demonstrators associated with the supervised practical placement in pathology laboratories.
The Department of Health together with the University subsidises the running of this course. Hence there is vested interest by the hospital Department of Pathology to produce graduates who have been given full professional training and are therefore competent in all aspects of medical laboratory science.