Medical Laboratory Sciences

Overview

Owing to great advances in biomedicine and technology, the role of medical laboratory specialists in patient care and management has gained great momentum in recent years.  The wide array of diagnostic lab tests performed by the diagnostic lab in any health care facility is a cornerstone upon which physicians and practitioners base their professional decisions as to how to treat and manage patients.  Hence, there is a growing need for highly qualified senior lab practitioners who could oversee the work of specialist and ensure the highest level of quality.  Hospitals and other health care facilities as well as accrediting entities consider it a pre-requisite for any medical diagnosis lab to be supervised by competent and well-trained individuals.

The department of Medical Lab Sciences at the University of Sharjah prides itself on being one of few academic departments in the UAE and the Gulf Region to train competent medical lab scientists.  However, as junior professionals, it takes our graduates many years of practice to gain the experience and knowledge necessary to work as senior lab managers.  Additionally, there are batteries of advanced and technically-challenging biochemical and molecular tests that need special training and can only be conducted by senior specialists.

Gaining enough proficiency to be an effective liaison of the profession, be it with medical teams at their facility, government agencies, public and private health care sectors, or quality control/assurance entities requires much deeper knowledge and experience than what a regular undergraduate training program in medical lab sciences would usually provide.

Program objectives

The objectives of this Medical Laboratory Sciences program are:

• Advance the training of graduates of medical lab sciences and related fields in core specialties of the profession (clinical chemistry, microbiology, clinical immunology, hematopathology , cytogenetics and Lab management)

• Enable enrolled students to develop the necessary scientific background and technical skills to carry out productive basic as well as community-health type research. 

• Ensure that all enrolled students will develop the set of skills needed to devise, develop and run tailor-made quality control and quality assurance protocols and programs at the workplace.  Essentials of institutional and external (national and international) certification and accreditation programs and inner-workings will also be part of this training component.