Practicing Histotechnologists Identify the Core Competencies Needed by Newly Graduated Biomedical Laboratory Scientists in Histotechnology and Histology

The universities of applied sciences in Finland offer 3.5-year courses for histotechnologists and they graduate as biomedical laboratory scientist with 12 credits in histology and histotechnology. The aim of this study was to survey practicing histotechnologists about the core competencies needed by newly graduated biomedical scientists in histology and histotechnology. The data were collected in Finland in 2015. We asked 43 participants to complete a questionnaire that comprised two background questions, five open-ended questions and 38 Likert scale questions, with the responses ranging from five (strongly agree) to one (strongly disagree), and 22 (51%) responded. They stated that the most important competencies were the principles of tissue processing (mean 4.77), embedding (4.64), laboratory safety (4.57), fixation methods (4.55), cutting by microtomy (4.55), quality control of sections (4.55), fixation methods (4.55), and principles of stains (4.36). The least important competencies were quality control of molecular pathology (2.56), interpretation of immunohistological stains (2.71), use of molecular pathology (2.89), and independent dissection (2.91). The respondents stated that there were 20 stains that newly graduated biomedical laboratory scientists needed to know. The practices involving staining emerged in the open responses and four were considered to be important: Hematoxylin-Eosin (n = 18), Periodic Acid Schiff (n = 11), Alcian Blue-Periodic Acid Schiff (n = 9), and Giemsa (n = 9). The most essential tissues to identify were the histology of the alimentary track (n = 9), skin (n = 6), and liver (n = 5). The core competencies that histotechnologists felt were important for newly graduated biomedical laboratory scientists seemed to be consistent with the current curriculum.