Instrumental Analysis for Medical Technologists at Small Universities Some schools are large enough or endowed financially so that special courses in instrumental analysis can be designed and offered solely for medical technologists by the chemistry department. At Midwestern University, hoth departments are rather small, (8 graduates each per year), and staffing and equipping a separate course is not economically feasible. The medical technologist needs an instrumental course that is broad in scope, and based on fundamentals, so the student's skills do not become obsolete and the student does not Lack the capability to become adaptable. Since medical technology students at Midwestern take nearly the same chemistry courses as the ehemistry major in the first three years, (8 hours of general chemistry, 8 hours of organic, 3 hours of biochemistry, and 4 hours of analytical chemistry), it was decided to add a second semester of analytical chemistry, (Instrumental Analysis), to the medical technology curriculum and to restructure the order and content of hoth the analytical chemistry courses so that they more closely met the specific needs and background of the medical technologist, while maintaining the integrity of these courses as foundations for the chemistry majors. This was accomplished by an actual syllabus change of only 20% by emphasizing clinical applications of instrumental techniques whenever possible and presenting the student with a wide variety of instrumental techniques to choose from in the analysis of constituents. For example, drug analysis is taught from the viewpoint of tle, electrophoresis, fluorescence, absorption speetrophotometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, and gas chromatography as well as differential pulse polarography. Students are also shown how X-ray powder diffraction can be used to identify constituents in renal stones, evaluate monitors for gel permeation chromatography columns, assay phenethicillin by optical rotatory dispersion as well as learning the more routine clinical analyses of serum, blood, and urine The two-semester analytical chemistry program follows the general guidelines of the A.C.S. Analytical Chemistry Curriculum Subcommittee.' We also felt that the Med Tech sould he able to utilize computers, but not necessarily he able to m i t e new programs. Therefore, the students continually use computer programs in the two-course sequence to evaluate their data and various instrumental signals. An outline of the equipment used and experiments performed in the two semester sequence is available from the authors. The program has gained a high regard by employees of our graduates. The graduates of this program felt secure of their abilities to use new instrumentation, train other technicians in their use, and make intelligent recommendations on purchases a t their respective institutions. We felt that the problemsolving approach emphasizing alternate analytical methods was pedagogically superior to any approach limited to strlct adherence of current clinical practice. Sharing of facilities and staff by different departments is an excellent mechanism to maintain the availability of high quality instruction and equipment in light of shrinking departmental hudgets and enrollments.
Midwestern University Wichita Falls, Texas 76308
586 / Journal of ChemicalEducation
