Behavior and Professional Requirements
- Dress to project a neat, well-groomed, professional appearance.
- Behave in a professional manner toward fellow students, faculty, and patients; Exhibit
attitude, integrity, communication, motivation, independence/leadership, self-worth
assessment and altruism which meet and exceed the expectations of a health care professional.
- Manage the use of time and systematize actions in order to complete professional and
technical tasks within realistic constraints.
- Possess the emotional health necessary to effectively employ intellect and exercise
appropriate judgments.
- Provide professional and technical services while experiencing the stresses of task-related
uncertainty (e.g. ambiguous test ordering, ambivalent test interpretation), emergent
demands (e.g. “stat” test orders), and a distracting environment (e.g. high noise
levels, crowding, complex visual stimuli).
- Be flexible and creative and adapt to professional and technical change.
- Recognize potentially hazardous materials, equipment, and situations and proceed safely
in order to minimize risk of injury to patients, self, and nearby individuals.
- Adapt to working with potentially infectious specimens, a variety of chemicals, and
biological agents.*
- Support and promote the activities of fellow students and of health care professionals.
- Help foster a team approach to learning, task completion, problem solving, and patient
care.
- Be honest, compassionate, ethical, responsible, and forthright about errors or uncertainty.
* Students/individuals with special health concerns (e.g. immunocompromised, allergic)
may put their health at risk when working in the clinical laboratory due to the agents
(infectious/biological and chemical) that are handled in all areas of the laboratory.
It is the responsibility of the student to request accommodations due to disabilities.
However, the student must be able to carry out the essential functions listed above.
Adapted from:
- Fritsma, G.A., Fiorella B. J., and Murphey, M. Essential Requirements for Clinical
Laboratory Science. Clinical Laboratory Science 1996. Vol. 9, pp 40-43.
- Russell BL, Owen M., Leibach EK, Stone RB, Meaders E., Kraj, B. Capturing Professionalism
in Pre-Service Education: Professionalism Tool Development and Implementation. Clinical
Laboratory Science, 2011.24(4): Suppl pp 4-11.
Updated February 28, 2012