Medical Laboratory Sciences

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: 

• Explain elements of laboratory science appropriately to various stakeholders or audiences (e.g. communicate with a patient vs. physician, internal communication and documentation).
• Organize information using industry standards so that readers are able to follow logic. (e.g. write an SOP according to CLSI guidelines).
• Describe observations and/or analysis accurately and in enough concrete detail that readers can quickly and fully grasp a situation.
• Use well-chosen evidence to support analysis, diagnoses, and/or recommendations.
• Accurately document information drawn from primary or secondary sources (e.g. in-text citations).
• Effectively connect observation to analysis.
• Summarize essential content concisely by excluding unnecessary information.
• Coherently integrate and synthesize the ideas of individual authors, colleagues, and published sources.
• Use graphics and figures to convey complicated ideas accurately.
• Effectively utilize current and emerging communication technologies to appropriately collect and disseminate information.
• Describe quantitative analyses accurately (e.g., statistical results and mathematical solutions).
• Accurately use field-specific terminology. (i.e. provide glossary to students).
• Control grammar/usage/proofreading issues that will distract readers or confuse meaning.

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 information within laboratory medicine clearly and appropriately for the target audience (e.g., healthcare provider, lab professional, patient, etc.).
• Controls grammar, syntax, and mechanics to ensure errors do not distract the reader or obscure meaning.
• Demonstrates proper formatting and effective structural layout, including the appropriate use of bullet points, tables,  and figures to improve accessibility.
• Adheres to expected organization (e.g., SOP, result reporting, accreditation summary, etc.) so that readers can easily follow the logical flow.
• Uses well-chosen evidence to support analysis and recommendations, ensuring appropriate documentation and integration of sources when appropriate (e.g., in-text citations and reference lists).
• Describes observations and data in precise, concrete detail so that readers can quickly grasp the situation (e.g., cell morphology or a procedural problem).
• Summarizes essential content precisely, effectively excluding unnecessary or redundant information.
• Demonstrates information literacy by accessing, critically evaluating, and applying relevant professional data and literature appropriately.
• Demonstrates accurate and appropriate use of terminology.
• Connects observations clearly and logically to the overarching analysis or diagnosis (distinguishing what is observed from what it means).

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.