As the number of traditional hospital medical lab internships decrease, university-based simulation labs are becoming an important tool in medical laboratory education. While simulation has been well studied in allied health professions such as Nursing, literature regarding the efficacy of simulation in a medical laboratory context is limited. We developed a university-based simulation lab course to replace/supplement a mandatory hospital-based internship rotation in microbiology and blood bank. We anecdotally observed that many students and new Medical Lab Scientists are intimidated by talking on the phone in a laboratory setting. One goal of our course was to increase student comfort communicating technical microbiology or blood bank information with members of the healthcare team. Students practiced calling critical results, troubleshooting problem specimens, and fielding incoming calls through structured role-play activities. Both within a peer practice session, and with a simulated healthcare provider. Our research question assessed how these role-play activities affected students' perceived comfort in communicating technical information on the phone. We assessed the student’s perception through a set of four pre and post survey questions, measured using a Likert scale. Each question was designed to assess students’ perceived comfort in common communication scenarios in a medical laboratory setting. We hypothesized that the simulation lab would increase students’ perceived comfort communicating technical information on the phone. The simulation lab increased students’ perceived comfort communicating on the telephone in all four scenarios. Increases ranged between 0.81 and 1.07 points on a 5 point Likert scale, with an average increase of 0.91 points (±0.12 SD). A MANOVA showed these differences represent a statistically significant change in student comfort F(4,43)=5.13, (p=0.002). In conclusion, we found structured role-play activities are a valuable tool to increase students’ comfort communicating technical information by telephone.
