The MLS faculty agrees that as healthcare professionals, medical laboratory scientists must be able to address a variety of audiences. For the entry‐level practitioner, most often the communications will be short and directed to another healthcare professional regarding laboratory testing that has been requested or performed. MLS graduates must also be able to effectively communicate the status of the laboratory to administrators and accrediting bodies using business letters, annual reports, and budget requests. The following writing characteristics have been identified by faculty and medical laboratory scientists as being important for successful written communication within the discipline: 

• Explanatory: Scientific and administrative information is explained logically and at levels of detail that are appropriate for the particular audience being addressed (health care providers, management, peers, and patients).
• Descriptive: Procedures, microscopic objects, and results are described accurately and unambiguously using appropriate medical and scientific terminology.
• Distilled: Conveys information in a thorough, yet precise and concise manner; without unnecessary information.
• Persuasive: Emphasizes reasoning used to make a decision or develop a plan of action.
• Organized: Texts use established administrative and scientific reporting formats, including those prescribed by regulatory and accrediting organizations.
• Multi‐modal: Texts present information accurately in both hand‐written and electronic formats, and including test result reports, proposals, posters, and Powerpoint presentations.
• Informative and Constructive: Writing in this field is clear, helpful, and educational.
• Timely: communications are expected to be submitted in a timely manner.
• Correct in grammar and spelling.

MLS faculty members have continued their efforts to define the desired writing abilities of MLS graduates. The list below is the most recent version: 

Concise  

• Integrates and revises collaborative and individual writings for concision, logic, and  readability.

Clear

• Deciphers and presents information in an accurate and precise manner, being mindful of circumstantial details.
• Writes clearly and effectively to the appropriate audience in a variety of media.

Contextual  

• Prepares appropriate documentation when necessary.
• Conveys information using audience appropriate language.
• Writing in the appropriate tone and in a professional manner.
• Uses graphics and figures to convey complicated ideas accurately.
• Effectively utilizes current and emerging communication technologies to appropriately collect and disseminate information.
• Describes quantitative analyses accurately (e.g., statistical results and mathematical solutions).

Professional

• Conveys information using professional and audience‐appropriate language.

Meaningful  

• Creates visuals using graphics and figures to convey complicated ideas.
• Writes clearly and effectively in a variety of media.
• Evaluates and demonstrates synthesis.
• Demonstrates mastery and proper application of terminology, tools, and jargon.

Reflective  

• Evaluates and effectively revises their own writing.

Collaborative  

• Creates and edits team‐written documents for concision, unity, and readability using collaborative authorship.

Conforming to expected formats  

• Uses correct mechanics, structure, and spelling.
• Follows formatting instructions for documents.
• Correctly uses industry‐standard formats.

Despite the wide range of written genres assigned in their courses, the MLS faculty developed the following short-listed menu of criteria from which members can adapt items suitable for their assignments:

• Explains subjects within laboratory medicine such that they can be clearly understood by a healthcare provider, laboratory professional, patient, or other appropriate audiences.
• Is free of grammar/usage/proofreading issues that will distract readers or confuse meaning.
• Demonstrates proper formatting and mechanics (margins, font, spacing).
• Stays within expected organization such that readers are able to follow logic.
• Records information in an accurate and unambiguous fashion.
• Precisely describes observations in order to clearly convey what is being observed.
• Summarizes essential content; is concise and free of unnecessary information.
• Accesses, selects, critically evaluates, and conveys information.
• Demonstrates appropriate use of terminology.

In April 2025, Medical Laboratory Sciences successfully submitted its Legacy Writing Plan to the Campus Writing Board. The Legacy plan supports recent changes in the MLS curriculum, including the development of new courses and the opening of the major to sophomore-level students.

Central to its Legacy efforts, the department will develop a comprehensive and interactive curriculum map that will allow faculty and instructors to strengthen a holistic approach to the design, integration, and assessment of writing activities throughout its expanded undergraduate curriculum. The map will include a description of core writing abilities and criteria for each course, along with links to assignments, rubrics, and resources that align with those abilities and criteria. Upon its completion, the department also intends to use the curriculum map as a student-facing document to support the practicing and transferring of writing abilities as students move from course to course. Over the next academic year, the curriculum map will be collaboratively developed by the faculty and instructors with support from an undergraduate WEC RA, funded through the Legacy plan.

Along with developing a curriculum map, the MLS department will host a series of  lunch-and-learn workshops each semester over the course of the next two years. Proposed topics for these workshops include: integrating abilities and criteria into rubrics; scaffolding writing from sophomore- to senior-level classes; using tools and technology to support student revision; and sequencing research-based assignments.

During the Legacy Project planning sessions, MLS Faculty recognized a disconnect between the department’s and its clinical partners’ perception of writing abilities for MLS graduates. To gain a better understanding of these divergent perspectives, the department plans to design and launch a survey in Fall 2025 for affiliates and practicing MLS professionals, locally and nationally. Drawing from the survey and interested survey participants, MLS plans to hold focus groups to gain an even deeper understanding of the value of writing and writing skills in the MLS discipline with aims to use this information to inform writing assignments, abilities, and criteria.