Building Resilient Laboratory Professionals

Whether transitioning from the classroom to the clinical laboratory or stepping into a new laboratory culture mid-career, laboratory professionals face a range of pressures that demand more than technical skill—they require emotional strength, adaptability, and the ability to thrive under pressure, otherwise known as resilience. 

Defining resilience 

Resilience is essential in a healthcare landscape increasingly strained by staff shortages and burnout to offer crucial patient care. It may look a little differently in different contexts, but according to educator Kristen Pesavento, EdD, MA, MLS(ASCP)^CMMB^CM, resilience in the laboratory means being able to adapt and make forward progress even when situations are challenging. Ms. Pesavento is Assistant Professor of Applied Health Sciences, Graduate Program Director, and Medical Laboratory Science Director of Academic Assessment for Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health at Loyola University, Chicago. 

Whether as a student in a healthcare discipline or an actual practicing professional, laboratory professionals face significant stress at times, she points out. “You’re dealing with decisions and context where people's lives are at stake, and sometimes the pressure of that can be a lot.” 

In addition to being able to “roll with the punches” and accept that not everything can be controlled or fixed, resilience means allowing for mistakes to happen, recognizing that people “are not robots,” Ms. Pesavento says. “We cannot be perfect every single second of the day.” 

Resilience can also follow from having the ability to prioritize and organize, according to Aaron Odegard MS, MLS (ASCP)^CMSM^CM, and from “taking what happens in those [stressful] opportunities to just keep moving forward” because “you learn from your failures,” he says. Mr. Odegard is the Quality Laboratory Coordinator at Baptist Health, Florida, and a professor of microbiology at both Santa Fe College in Florida and University of Arkansas Medical Sciences. 

The necessity of a resilient workforce 

Resilience is more important than ever in new graduates because of shortages in the workforce, which means new hires may have to work extra hours to meet patient needs, Ms. Pesavento says. Of course, that has the potential to lead to “burnout”—a word she doesn’t like because it “triggers more anxiety,” preferring the term “crispy,” which, she says, allows her to label feelings of overwhelm and stress with a lighter term. 

“You need to be able to regroup, find your own sense of self, adapt to your environment, and find the best in your situation,” she says. Without it, people leave healthcare “in droves,” she says, or question their choices as they enter healthcare professions. 

To prevent becoming “crispy,” laboratory professionals often need to tend more to their own needs, Ms. Pesavento says, which can feel strange for people who are in a caretaking profession. 

“What makes you happy? If you really love to go out and sit in the sunshine, maybe do that for five minutes during the day or go for a walk because that's going to create that mind-body connection,” she says. 

Doing these things can make people more adaptable and resistant to stress. 

How do you build a resilient laboratory workforce? 

Resilience should be taught from the ground up, in school and then reinforced in the workplace Ms. Pesavento believes. She stresses the need for “soft skills” such as learning how to express your feelings, to identify when you’re having a strong emotion, and then taking the time to pause and breathe before you react. 

To be able to do that, however, often requires “community,” being able to talk to others, both professionally, and as a network of support. “Because other people from the same background will understand what it is you're going through,” she says. 

Another key skill is being able to break down larger problems into smaller, more manageable ones, Ms. Pesavento says. 

“Whether that is chunking things out or taking a step back to analyze a large problem and being able to break it down into more manageable steps, that really goes into resilience,” she says. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and freeze. But if you can “reframe it in your mind and think of it into more manageable pieces that really can help you overcome those difficult situations,” she says.