Initiating a secondary education apprenticeship program for the clinical laboratory

The shortage of medical laboratory professionals entering the work field has prompted the clinical laboratory at North Memorial Medical Center to take a proactive stance. Working together with Minnesota School District 287 and North Memorial's education and human resources departments, we have created a high school-age program to teach young students. The focus of this program will be the science behind health care. The state has chosen our program to be the template for the statewide model. Labs in the state will follow this template when starting their new programs. This is the first apprenticeship program in the state of Minnesota for a health-care laboratory. The new program will bring students to our lab and teach them practical skills. These skills will include client services skills (phone etiquette, critical thinking) and technical skills (computer skills, EKGs, testing a patient's blood sugar). More important, it will expose high school students to a career in science--a career option that they might not have been familiar with. This article presents the steps we have completed to introduce this new program.