Patient-centered and patient-focused care purports that patients are at the center of all clinical decisions made for optimal medical outcomes. Optimal medical outcomes originate from accurately and reliably executed task performance by healthcare professionals trained to administer highly specific care for each patient condition. Many of these executed tasks are performed in the presence of the patient; this is defined as direct patient care. However, there are equally important tasks executed that are not performed in the presence of the patient; the performance of diagnostic laboratory testing is an example of such tasks.
Clinical training of healthcare laboratory professionals begins with enrollment into degree-based or certificate-based training programs designed to instruct students on theory and practice of diagnostic testing and associated tasks that support testing. This instruction comes in the form of didactic coursework and clinical practicums performed in a hospital or clinic-based setting. Most of the instruction clinical students receive is designed by college faculty who teach within Clinical Laboratory Science and Medical Laboratory Technology programs, and their students complete all practical training in the hospital clinical laboratory setting.
This study examined how these clinical training experiences are created to include patient experience and what instructional strategies are used in clinical training for Medical Technology students. A qualitative case study design sought to describe how faculty, and the instructional designers who assist them, design program curriculum to include the patient perspective, which is used to create instructional strategies to enhance the patient experience. Findings show that little purposeful planning and design exists for patient experience inclusion within the design of curriculum; however, clinical training instructional strategies indirectly teach the concept using various types of case-based scenarios aligned to intended purpose and expected outcome
