Life and lab on pause: how Canada’s laboratory research trainees have been impacted by COVID-19
In the spring of 2020, many businesses and public institutions shut down to slow the spread of COVID-19. This included research laboratories at Canadian universities. Widespread laboratory closures like this were unprecedented.
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
We wanted to examine how COVID-19 impacted these laboratory research trainees. We had two goals with this research: the first goal was to identify what support laboratory research trainees would need when returning to in-person work and the second was to learn from the experiences of these trainees to make best-practices recommendations for widespread laboratory closures.
To answer our research questions, we used an online survey. We asked trainees about how their labs closed, what it was like working from home, and their concerns and hopes for the return to in-person work. We also offered follow-up interviews for interested survey participants.
We found that for many trainees, laboratory closures were chaotic and confusing. They received conflicting messages from administration and supervisors, in part due to the rapidly changing nature of the pandemic.
Many labs also did not have standardized procedures for shutting down experiments and securing their workspace. Trainees were very stressed while working from home. Worsening mental health was identified as a concern by many. Respondents were very concerned about the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on their careers and lives.
We identified how shutdown protocols could be improved in future laboratory closures. COVID-19 has the potential to have a long-lasting impact on scientific research in Canada. However, there are ways we can support the next generation of Canadian laboratory-based researchers.
Read the paper — When the labs closed: graduate students’ and postdoctoral fellows’ experiences of disrupted research during the COVID-19 pandemic by Celeste Suart, Theresa Nowlan Suart, Katherine Graham, and Ray Truant
