The annual ASCLS meeting is being held in Chicago in July. This is a great opportunity for students, because of all the valuable information and connections that can be found there. This meeting will serve as an introduction to the organization and give students an idea of what the organization is all about.

While there is going to be business at this meeting, there are also going to be opportunities ...

ViraCor Laboratories, which specializes in molecular diagnostic testing for infectious diseases; and IBT Laboratories, a clinical-diagnostics and biomedical-research laboratory specializing in immunology and allergy assays, today announced the companies are merging to create a new specialty diagnostics laboratory.

The merger of ViraCor and IBT creates a combined company with more than 200 employees serving ...

One of the realities of my job has been working with other healthcare managers. In the last ten years, I've worked with many. At the risk of telling secrets, here are a few myths about managers:

Managers are trained to do their jobs.

Many managers are in their positions after being promoted from within. After years of service, they have asked for the job for the prestige or a better ...

Yesterday, I accompanied a friend to the doctor to provide moral support and also to "translate". My friend historically has had a very negative experience with the medical establishment and hasn't always had an advocate for her as she navigated the complex system. So I knew it was important to her that I tagged along as her "insider."

The visit itself went very well until my friend went to ...

My summer rotations kicked off with a good start in hematology. I was placed at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville. I really like working and learning with all the medical technologists there. There is never a dull moment!

I really learned a lot about working the Beckman Coulter analyzer. After about 3 or 4 days, I was able to run the hematology section--well, except for reporting results, of ...

Tonight at the AMT Award Convocation, AMT members will win awards for their talent, skills and service. Congrats to all winners!

Order of the Golden Microscope--Charlie Baker, MT, South Carolina

Medallion of Merit--Patricia Poitier-Sands, RMA, Florida

Technologist of the Year--Richard Crowner, MT, RPT, Florida

RMA of the Year--Gretchen ...

Yesterday at the AMT National Meeting, Jim Hernandez, MD, MS, assistant professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic, College of Medicine; medical director of Laboratories and Chair of Clinical Pathology, Mayo Clinic-Arizona, spoke to attendees on "Adjusting Your Sails: Motivational Skills for Allied Health Professionals."

Dr. Hernandez focused his lecture mostly on change--how some people ...

Suppose you want to measure turnaround time for ED specimens. This naturally raises the question What is turnaround time?

According to one article in Clinical Biochemist, although clinicians complain about turnaround times being too long, most don't agree on what is acceptable. Or even ...

"I was shaking. My heart was beating fast. I was scared ... and that was only when I was being interviewed by 60 Minutes!"

US Airways First Officer Jeff Skiles told this joke when he opened up the keynote address at the 71st AMT National Meeting, held June 22-27 in Minneapolis.

Skiles told attendees he was not scared when his plane landed on the Hudson River in January, mainly because of his ...

Highlighting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a new display was unveiled recently at the Memphis International Airport in the Danny Thomas Terminal.

Inspired by the airport terminal's architecture, the permanent display illustrates in words and photos the vision of the hospital's founder, Danny Thomas.

It focuses on the hospital's outstanding treatment, innovative research and great ...

After the whole Student Bowl experience, I was feeling pretty well prepared to take the Board of Registry Exam.  Of course, I continued to study till the very end. Our class of six decided to take the exam the morning of our graduation from the hospital. I guess we all just figured ...

Healthcare providers are familiar with superiors or physicians sometimes demanding that providers act in a manner against the provider's better judgment, scope of practice or established policy and procedure ...

The New York Times reports that a laboratory sent letters to nearly a thousand patients for redraws after six patient samples on six specific days in a nine-month period were discovered as mislabeled. A hospital spokesman describes them as "isolated incidents," although he points out that medical errors ...

As medical technology students, we are being prepared for the workforce. We are being taught to perform laboratory procedures in a timely and accurate manner. We are being taught to think about the theory behind the test, not that we are just running the test to see a positive or negative. We are learning about the new technologies and the modern ways of running tests manually.

Once we are out in a laboratory, ...

Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), Franklin Lakes, NJ; and Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), a Swiss foundation developing, evaluating and accelerating implementation of new diagnostic tools for poverty-related diseases, today announced a significant price reduction in the cost of liquid culture testing.

The agreement lowers the cost of BD MGIT reagents.  BD's TB diagnostic technologies ...

As a person who has lost a loved one to cancer, I am always interested to find out more about the advances being made to fight this horrible disease. Sometimes I forget that there are so many people behind these advances and discoveries, working tirelessly to help save lives.

The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center recently released a book called Legends and Legacies. The book includes the personal journeys ...

Your workplace may have a buddy system to bond new hires with your organization. That's great for trivial questions about the lunch menu, where to park, or who handles payroll. But what about tough questions? For example:

Why do I work more weekends than other techs?

In an open environment, this question is asked ...

Jessica Terry, 18, discovered a granuloma while looking at her own intestinal tissue slides in an Advanced Placement science class in her high school, ending the mystery about her previously un-diagnosed illness.

CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen reports how physicians were ...

Currently, there is a shortage of medical laboratory professionals. It has been stated before that the laboratory is a big part of patient healthcare, yet the laboratory is often overlooked. Therefore, how can we get students interested in the field and how can we get them to apply to the medical technology programs?

Recruitment is a big part of trying to remedy the problem. Going out to the high schools ...

"The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic." With these words, Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), raised the influenza pandemic alert to phase 6, the highest level.

With almost 30,000 confirmed cases reported in 74 countries, and direct human-to-human transmission no longer clear in some countries, H1N1 has met the scientific criteria for a pandemic. ...

At the 18th IFCC-EFCC European Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, data will be presented on Ortho Clinical Diagnostics' two in vitro diagnostic systems recently introduced to the market. The award winning VITROS 5600 Integrated System and the VITROS 3600 Immunodiagnostic System were conceived and engineered from the ground up based on new research and feedback from 60 laboratories to give ...

Having diversity in the workplace is an important matter. In her book Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce, Natalie Holder-Winfield explains why this is key to any organization and how to bring diversity into your workplace. ADVANCE asked Holder-Winfield a few questions on this topic. For more information, check out her Web ...

With a handheld scanner attached to our terminal, here's a batch file to capture data:

@ECHO OFF
:LOOP
SET /P ACCT=WAND TUBE
ECHO %ACCT% %DATE% %TIME% >> SCANNED.LOG
GOTO LOOP

Saved as SCANNED.BAT in a place where you can run it - such as the Desktop - it's just an ugly black box with WAND TUBE in white lettering. (Change that by clicking the C:\ icon in the title bar and checking ...

For years the Joint Commission has been the accreditor of hospitals including all its departments (including laboratories). Although many are not aware of it, even hospital laboratories accredited by CAP (College of American Pathologists) are also reviewed when their hospital is accredited. To many the review is transparent because Joint Commission has chosen to accept CAP accreditation of the lab; rather than conduct ...

BD Biosciences, a segment of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), has expanded its research grants to support life sciences research during the current economic downturn.

"We have expanded the BD Biosciences Research Grant Program to provide a greater pool of funding and an increased number of grants that may offer a lifeline to some of the numerous projects being halted or delayed because of resource cuts," ...