Galina Dronova, University of Minnesota Medical Laboratory Sciences Class of 2014
Ten years ago, Galina Dronova, newly graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in Microbiology, experienced the first of two encounters that would inform and indelibly alter her career.
The first occurred as she sat in a clinic lab for a blood draw, and came to the same conclusion she had many times before, in this environment: that she would find her true professional passion somewhere within a laboratory’s walls.
“Every time I went to get my blood drawn, I would see a laboratory and ask, how can I work there? I was just interested in the clinical field,” she says.
This calling inspired Galina to enroll in the University’s Medical Laboratory Sciences (MLS) program and to graduate with a second bachelor’s degree, this in MLS.
“The program really stirred me,” she says. “It provided a direct application. You are a certified member of health care.”
Park Nicollet hired Galina to work in its laboratory as a medical laboratory scientist, preparing and analyzing lab specimens, so care teams could diagnose and treat illnesses. She ascended to become team lead. And then, the health system instituted a change that for a second time would steer her professional path in a direction she never anticipated. It recruited her to a temporary role, as it integrated a new lab information system (LIS) called Epic Beaker into its electronic health record platform. Her job was to teach and train others in the lab, how to enter lab data into the system and troubleshoot technology problems.
Following the Epic Beaker implementation, a full-time role developed to assist Health Partners’ Principal Trainer as a Learning Specialist, and Galina took it.
At about that time and across town, a major development was underway within the region’s health care ecosystem. Fairview Health Services (now MHealth Fairview) and HealthEast had initiated a merger. The simple premise was that the combined entity would expand access to health care throughout the Twin Cities and provide value to patients.
But like many integrations, executing this vision meant managing through myriad complexities. It would involve merging Fairview’s seven hospitals and multiple primary care clinics, and HealthEast’s four hospitals and its clinics, into one system.
This included the massive task of combining the IT platforms that support the two entities’ medical laboratories, into one. And that involved finding a Principal Trainer to teach laboratorians across the system how to use Epic Beaker as MHealth Fairview’s new LIS and integrate it with the Epic Beaker platform that HealthEast already uses.
Galina accepted MHealth Fairview’s offer to step up to the role.
“I was so conflicted because I love this line of work, but I also loved working directly in the lab,” she says.
The “work” that Galina’s role involves, is to ensure that every MHealth Fairview laboratory professional is fluent on the new LIS leading up to and following the integrated system’s planned go-live date in July, and that they know the system well enough to troubleshoot problems.
To do this, she needed to design a training plan and set in motion a workforce involving credentialled trainers, who train “power users”, who train the “end users”, the laboratorians throughout the MHealth Fairview-HealthEast system, who will be entering the laboratory data into the electronic record.
There are 1,300 laboratory practitioners within the MHealth Fairview system, alone.
“One of the most exciting things about this go-live is that currently we’re one system but we don’t operate on the same lab information system,” Galina says. “It’s going to be a lot easier to track the movement of that specimen from location A to location B because now you’ve built that bridge between the two lab information systems.”
In effect, the contributions of Galina and her team will make it easier for care teams to access a patient’s lab results regardless of where, within MHealth-Fairview/HealthEast the patient received care, where the patient’s lab sample was taken, and where that specimen was analyzed. The patient will receive results and a corresponding care diagnosis and care plan quicker, as a result.
This allows Galina to continue to feel connected to the laboratory and the people it serves, despite leading a function that moved her away from direct specimen testing.
“I’m technically a part of the health information technology learning development department, but most of my day is actually spent with lab operation, working with laboratory leaders to understand what their needs are,” she says. “If I can teach with the joy and teach the curiosity to empower the user to provide the most efficient workflow or find the information, then I’ve done my job.”
She is equipped to thrive in this role, she says, because of the teaching she received within the University of Minnesota’s MLS program.
“At the University of Minnesota, they don’t just train laboratorians, they train leaders. They teach you high level synthesis problem solving skills, teamwork and the importance of collaboration. They give you the passion and drive to make this degree whatever you want it to be,” Galina says. “That’s not something that’s written in a textbook, that’s semesters of the culturing of a person. Where I am today is 100 percent a derivative of what the MLS program has done for me.”
Galina preparing for MHealth-Fairview LIS launch