The way we were (Musings on the benefits of attending conferences)

Updated: 21 May 2013 
Always get new ideas, scrap others, after it's posted

May's blog title comes from my favorite Barbara Streisand song of all time, The Way We Were. Good movie too. 

As a retired technologist and educator, I often think back on 'the way we were' and discuss the past, present, and future with colleagues. Many disagreements, but we tend to agree that the 1960s to the 1980s were a wonderful time to be working in transfusion medicine.

Hence, I was sad to learn that the 3-day Durham 'Blood Group Serology' conference in the UK, offered every 2 years since 1982, has been suspended indefinitely. [Sorry. The website is long gone, so I cannot reference it.]

Over the years, Durham drew some of the glitterati of blood banking,  as well as many UK-based 'trench workers' who make the entire system work.

The reasons given for suspending the conference are a microcosm of what's happening to continuing professional development (CPD) worldwide:

• Costs to fund the conference are hard to come by

• Lack of training budgets means employers will not provide support for delegates to attend

• Getting time away from work for a 3-day meeting is difficult

• Changes to how departments are organised will likely not allow for future conferences that specialise in transfusion medicine

• Many members of the organising committee profile are retired

The Cost

Let's examine conference costs using the AABB meeting as an example.

AABB (Funds in $US) 

An example of possible costs is given below. Costs could easily run higher depending where the conference is.

1. Plane fare to Denver, USA from Edmonton,Canada: $661, two cities relatively close ('cheap flight' search - Could be much more for direct flights at good times) 

2. Registration (member - full meeting): $595 (early discount) 

3. Accommodation: $169 to $248/night depending on hotel 4 nights: $676 to $992. Ave = $834. 

4. Food: Assume 4 breakfasts at $10 each, 2 lunches at $15, and 2 dinners at $25. Total = $120

Grand Total: $2210, probably more....

Assuming a technologist / biomedical scientist, perhaps with a mortgage and young children or teenagers (expensive to feed, cloth, entertain, fund sports activities, and school - now that parents are expected to provide many basics), was willing to take holiday time - away from family - for the conference, how many could afford - or justify to themselves and spouses - $1000s of dollars spent on CPD?

Some could afford it, some would sacrifice time, money, and family to make it a priority. But in today's workplace, that number is dwindling. Let's hypothesize why.

REALITY
To me, and I could be wrong, the main reason is that too many staff do not feel particularly appreciated these days. It's the same old story of employers

• Planning ways to decrease staff, one of their main costs, via centralized testing and processing, less skilled staff, and automation.
• Not funding CE or CPD, which can be interpreted as, 'We really don't care if you learn more, because we plan to hire the least educated, cheapest staff.'
• Asking staff to do more with less and to 'work smarter', as if staff were somehow dumb.

And it doesn't help that senior laboratory and medical staff always get paid time off, and perhaps even funding, to attend conferences. Moreover, they can probably afford to attend all the conferences they choose to, with or without support. But seeing well paid staff routinely attending conferences likely grates on lower paid trench workers who get no funding.

As well, senior staff may be asked to present at conferences, which usually comes with travel, accommodation and meal support. The AABB is an exception and does not fund speakers who are AABB members, at least that's what I was told a few years ago. 

BENEFITS
So what are the benefits of employees attending scientific conferences? 

None that can be documented, if there's no accountability, which is why it helps if attendees - including medical directors - are required to present the highlights of what they learned to those who stayed at home. Why should docs be exempt from what's expected of everyone else?

Most experienced professionals acknowledge that the main benefit of attending conferences is NOT listening to the talks or even attending interactive, participatory workshops, which are more useful than passive listening to experts present their research, often with poor, undecipherable slides. 

Let's face it. If you've attended many conferences and read the journals, you know close to all of what's in the talks. 

But to novices, besides the knowledge gleaned, listening to talks by well known personalities can be thrilling. And participating in workshops gives the chance to test ideas and skills with peers.

Note: Ironically, attending talks and workshops at major conferences is valuable, maybe even most valuable, to 'new kids on the block,' who no longer get to attend. The return on investment is better in the long term because newbees are the future of any profession. The ROI on near-retirement senior staff is minimal. [Had to toss ROI into the mix because it's a buzzword of the biz-types who now manage health care organizations.]

Knowledge aside, the main conference benefit is in the networking and informal discussions that occur over a glass of beer or wine or soda pop at dinners and in bars. That's where you discover the wealth of practical and frank advise that isn't in presentations and journals.

It's where young staff once would meet peers and enjoy many a laugh.  Where they'd create 

• Friendships to last a lifetime. 
• Friendships that sustain careers during tough times. 
• Friendships that make personal sacrifices worthwhile.

At all conferences, but especially national or international ones, young professionals could meet colleagues from far and wide whose enthusiasm and insights would inspire them to higher achievements.

Thankfully, some of the good stuff still happens for novices at local and regional conferences. And some get involved with national conferences held in their region, mainly because they're the ones required to do the work to make them happen.

But the joy of attending major conferences is mostly gone now, at least for the many, largely invisible, trench workers who keep the system going. 

And, as noted by the Durham committee, many of those who made CPD / CE events happen are retired or near retiring. 

Who will take their place? Likely not young staff, most of whom have no experience in the joys of CE / CPD provided by attending conferences.

FOR FUN

• One of the more fun conferences, CSTM 2000 in Quebec City (As an 'early adopter' of Internet technologies since 1994, I presented a half-day workshop on 'Using the Internet in Transfusion Medicine'. Seems laughable now.)
• The way we were (Barbra Streisand)

As usual, comments are most welcome.

Comments
Please see all comments below. 

Reply to Elaine Van Oyen
Thanks, Elaine.

 I agree that organizations see knowledge and networking as most beneficial to staff who can make actually make changes suggested at 'meetings-of-the-minds' (nice turn of phrase). 

Yes, senior staff  - the 'deciders' - should attend conferences, but must it be mutually exclusive to a few junior staff attending too? 

Fact is, senior medical staff can afford to attend and pay $3000- $5000 out of their own pockets. Many junior staff cannot. 

Which hospitals cannot afford $6000/year to send 2 to 3 junior transfusion service staff to conferences? Or $30,000 to send staff from 5 clinical labs? 

Transfusion services in Canada are regionalized. Which health care regions cannot spend $18,000/yr for 2-3 staff from 3 centralized transfusion testing facilities to attend?

Judging by recent events at Alberta Health Services (AHS), some senior employees claim 6 figure mega-bucks annually in expenses for travel, accommodation, restaurants and booze. AHS routinely signs contracts that allow even disgraced senior staff to get $1 million+ in golden handshakes. 

But they won't fund CE for laboratory staff. What's wrong with this picture?

The long and winding road - good vibrations (Musings on preparing for career advancement)

This month, I'm pleased to have a guest blogger, one of my 'kids' (former students, MLS grads, all of whom I'm extremely proud of):

• Lisa Denesiuk, MLT, ART (CSMLS), MLS (ASCP), SBB (ASCP), BSc (MLS)

Earlier this year Lisa moved to a new position with Dynalife Dx and became a Learning Management System and Website Content Specialist. 

Intrigued by her job title, I asked Lisa to write a guest blog on how that came about and what was involved. Despite being a busy health professional, she graciously agreed.

The blog's title comes from an old Beatles song (naturally) and a classic by the Beach Boys. 

Why should you read this blog?
To me, Lisa's career path epitomizes a Louis Pasteur quotation:

• Chance favors the prepared mind.
• If you retain nothing more from this blog, remember this.

Educators like to tell students that their undergraduate degrees can take them in many directions. To me, careers beyond the routine are possible only if graduates actively continue to learn both formally and informally, and that takes much effort. 

Continuing education (CE) and continuing professional development (CPD) require commitment to learn outside of work hours, invariably sacrificing time with family and friends or relaxation time. Often it also involves spending one's own money, since today's employers seldom offer financial support to take courses or attend conferences, even if staff present at them.

Going to work each day and giving 100% is not enough. To prepare for future job opportunities, health professionals need to give blood, sweat and tears after hours.

For those of you who want to advance, who want to do something different, yet still use your basic health profession education and training, below is one person's path to an interesting career.

Advice from me to you: Instead of reading the way that busy health professionals usually do (i.e., rapidly scanning and racing through e-mails and websites without content registering in your mind), I suggest you sit back, take a few deep breaths, and focus on slow reading. If you don’t have the time right now, return to the blog when you do.

Slow reading is analogous to slow cooking, an alternative to fast food and something I now practice daily. Reading much transfusion-related news to decide if it’s worth reporting, I’ve had to institute the practice of slow reading. Try it, you’ll like it!

BACKGROUND
As background, Lisa is one of two former students who were awarded the ACMLT Award of Distinction.

Because she began work in a transfusion service, I followed Lisa's career with interest, as I do all MLS grads, especially those who are employed in transfusion laboratories or blood centres.

As well, Lisa took a CE course I offered by distance education on scientific writing. The CE course was based on a book written as a supplement to MLSCI 320, Fundamentals of Writing for the Biomedical Sciences, later translated into Japanese, as Wakariyasui igakueigoronbun.

Of 100s of participants, Lisa achieved the highest grade. Since this was pre-Internet, the course was an old-fashioned, paper-based correspondence course.

Anyone who has evaluated written papers, essays, and the like, knows that grading them is sheer hell. Which is my way of saying that marking Lisa's assignments was pure pleasure, forever endearing her to me. 

What follows is Lisa's story from bench lab technologist to Learning Management System and Website Content Specialist. Regardless of your current professional role, her narrative has lessons for all.

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GUEST BLOG  by Lisa Denesiuk

How did I get here?

It was a long and winding road (Pat will insert appropriate musical link - see later), which is ironic (ditto on an old Alanis Morissette song) because one of the reasons that I chose the medical laboratory profession was that I liked the straight line from finish this program to get this job.

Straight Path

I started out on that straight path, graduating from the University of Alberta Medical Laboratory Science program in 1987 and working (with a few minor detours) for 13 years on the bench in the transfusion service of a busy, inner city hospital.

Twists in the Road

My next job involved moving off the bench and off shift work. I assisted rural transfusion services with maintaining competency and updating procedures and implementing new processes (such as a redistribution program for near-outdate group O RBC). I was a consultant but under the auspices of my employer’s contracts rather than on my own.

Then the off-the-bench road developed more switchbacks.  Another round of healthcare restructuring meant that there was not enough transfusion medicine within my employer’s portfolio to support a full time transfusion specialist.

I had to choose between switching employers and switching career focus.

Fork in the Road

Choosing to stay with my employer, I moved into departments and jobs with difficult to explain titles like ‘Strategic Initiatives’ and ‘Business and Technology Analyst’. 

The beauty and the horror of the coordinator/ analyst/ specialist/ consultant jobs were that I was never quite sure what I would be doing next.  Obviously horrific for someone who likes straight lines, but really beautiful for someone who likes to learn new things.

On a personal scale, my career choices allowed me to develop some advanced software skills (I am still one of the go-to people in my company for advice on making Excel® charts with three axes, though I could never get the hang of pivot tables). I also learned and re-learnt a lot about the non-transfusion laboratory disciplines.

And most importantly, I had to maintain the knack for learning new things quickly (assuming I wanted to stay employed, pay off my mortgage, and continue to supply my cats with organic cat food, which of course is non-negotiable). Which leads to my latest job...

And where is ‘here’?

My new job title is Learning Management System and Website Content Specialist. The font on both the paper and electronic business cards keeps getting smaller and smaller.

The back story. . .

• My employer bought a learning management system (LMS-software to track learning) and learning content software (LCMS- to build eLearning courses) about 2 years ago.
• Originally, consultants built our first few courses based on information provided by supervisory and experienced staff members.
• It took about 1 year to get everything ready for a launch to employees. Then. . .
• About 2 months before the date set for the launch, the employee in charge of the LMS transferred to another department.
•   At that time, the organization decided to bring the course building in-house. So the ‘team’ was reorganized into one ‘content specialist’ (i.e., laboratory geek) and one ‘developer’ (i.e., IT geek). I’m the lab geek.

Needless to say with both of the team members having < 2 months to learn the LMS themselves before explaining it to 1100 employees (> 500 in one-on-one sessions), our first few months on the job were hectic!

Why was I the ‘chosen one’?

•   Served on the committee that investigated eLearning providers and suspect that the questions asked during this process demonstrated an understanding of life-long learning and a passion for the topic. (Likely the main reason the position was offered.)
• Gained much informal teaching experience in my laboratory career, but current boss was probably unaware of most of it.
• Discovered early that I loved to teach and succeeded at it. Almost from the moment my probationary period ended, I was a preceptor while on the bench.
• While a TM consultant, I often gave review sessions to staff in the rural hospitals and presented at conferences.
• Participated in continued professional development in various formats over the years, but again current boss probably didn’t know about that. 

A self-confessed CE junkie, I’ve added several letters behind my e-signature:

• ART (CSMLS, 2004)
• SBB (ASCP, 2006)

SBB blended program (2 weeks on-site within a full year course of distance education) from the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Took instructor-led courses, paper-based distance courses, electronically delivered courses, blended courses, courses for fun, courses for work, courses for professional development ... name a course type and I have probably taken at least one example.

Also volunteered a lot for professional organizations, which is an amazing source of informal education. Plus you get to know the most incredible fellow laboratorians.

Unexpected Opportunity Knocks

You never know what unexpected opportunities will develop from something that seems straight forward. I finished the UTMB course, passed the ASCP SBB exam and went back to my life.

Then a couple years later I was asked to write the ABO chapter for a new transfusion textbook, because my SBB instructor recommended me to the book authors. I wrote the chapter and then a couple of years later was asked by the book authors if I would like to become the fourth co-author on the textbook because they were stuck and needed some change to kick start the project.

And several years later we are on the final push to meet our deadline so the first edition can hit the shelves in June 2013. And for the last few months I have been in charge of developing the figures. All of a sudden I can do intricate stuff in Visio® because years ago I took an SBB course, not an obvious outcome.

What does a content specialist do?

My core function is as interpreter. . . I’m the go-between for the subject matter experts (SMEs) and the developer. To illustrate, my position includes:

• Listening to what the SMEs want.  Love this acronym. Doesn’t it conjure a picture of a scholastic smurf-like creature? I often have to hone their focus to something manageable.
•  Investigating the topic, then building a storyboard (think PowerPoint® with notes about animations, pictures, pop up boxes, rollovers, etc.) and an exam question bank.
• Facilitating the review by SMEs and, after tweaking, handing the storyboard over to our developer (IT geek) to build the eLearning course.
• Helping if the developer doesn’t understand some laboratory-specific process or jargon or what my storyboard notes mean.
• Coordinating the course rollout to appropriate staff members.

Concrete example:

• SME’s manager: ‘We want to reduce our data entry errors.’
• Me to the quality department: ‘What are the 3 most common data entry errors we see?’
• Me to the SME: ‘Can I sit in on your 2-day in-person training session for newly hired laboratory assistants?’
• Me to the IT geek: ‘Here is the first of 3 storyboards about data entry - it is all about entering patient demographics correctly.’
• IT geek to me: ‘Do you really want to say Order a DPHON on this slide or is this some bizarre typo?’....Reply:  ‘Yes, that is a comment that our laboratory information system recognizes and it translates to …and the laboratory assistants will know what that sentence means.‘
• Me to the LMS via writing an ongoing rule: ‘Enroll all laboratory assistant IIs who work in patient care centres in the first data entry module.’

What do I love about my job?

• Getting to teach again
• Opportunities that electronic learning presents
• Great potential to help our staff members, who are geographically scattered
• Learning or re-learning many different topics
• Working with new technology and coming up with creative solutions to obstacles

What I don’t like about my job?

Unfortunately, I’m

• Sad when hearing that staff members see eLearning as an imposition rather than a benefit.
• Frustrated when the priorities we work on change after every meeting and consequently for months nothing ever seems to get to the finished product stage.

Most frustrations relate to being in the midst of a cultural change. Half the management and executive team seem to see eLearning as the magic pill that will cure all ills and the other half are not convinced that time, energy and money invested in the system will result in a good return on investment. 

I’m sure the reality will fall somewhere in the middle, but in the meantime, we are caught between widely divergent, and often unrealistic, expectations.

My own learning journey

Besides the obvious learning of new software systems and relearning of laboratory topics, my employer is supporting my pursuit of a Certificate in Adult and Continuing Education (CACE).

What if you wanted to become a learning content specialist?

• Structured programs about building eLearning (IT geek part) and about delivering adult education (lab geek part) are expanding. Consider taking a few courses.
• A content specialist requires strong communication skills as the bedrock, and experience is the best top soil. (What I bring that the consultant could not was credibility with the SMEs. Being able to talk the lab talk goes a long way to smoothing over differences of opinion). 
• The mulch in the metaphor is being able to learn both lab topics and new software quickly.
•  My best advice is to be open to opportunities, which often cloak themselves as ‘more work projects.’

FOR FUN
As noted, the blog's title derives from these songs

• Long and winding Road (Paul McCartney in Kiev, Ukraine, 2008)
• Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)

Comments are most welcome BUT, due to excessive spam,  please e-mail me personally or using the address in the newsletter notice. I’d love to hear how you prepare to advance and expand horizons beyond the typical career ladder.