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Abort Retry Ignore
October 23, 2009 6:07 AM by Scott Warner
MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) debuted 28 years ago, quickly finding its way into labs on PCs in offices or attached to instruments. Programs such as BASIC promised much. We just knew , deep down, that computers meant less paper, effortless Read More...
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Back to BASIC
October 19, 2009 6:17 AM by Scott Warner
I once read an article about a BASIC program used to temperature-correct arterial blood gas results. This was in the day when a program could be "keyed in" from a magazine. BASIC, which stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, was Read More...
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Calculations
September 8, 2009 6:17 AM by Scott Warner
Most of us aren't mathematicians. Well, I'm not. I've known people who are just better at "seeing" math than myself. I've always struggled to add a column of figures in my head, forget solving Fermat's Last Theorem . Which has been solved already. Just Read More...
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Package Inserts
September 2, 2009 6:14 AM by Scott Warner
In writing a procedure, I strive to make it the reference on the bench. Yet no matter how good a written procedure is, the package insert is always invaluable. There are two reasons for this. One, the package insert is the main reference for any procedure Read More...
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Misfiling
August 28, 2009 6:06 AM by Scott Warner
If your lab uses a card file to track patient blood bank history, some cards are misfiled. Depending on where in the file they are placed, they may be good as gone. A blood banker won't be able to compare blood types or know that the patient has a positive Read More...
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Fast Bar Codes
July 27, 2009 7:20 AM by Scott Warner
Let's suppose your information system test database prints at least one barcode specimen label for each test. This label contains the patient name, account number, test order number, a description of the test, and the barcode itself. Now suppose a new Read More...
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Making Sense of Results
July 22, 2009 4:49 AM by Scott Warner
Whether reading a body fluid smear, a culture plate, or chemistry panel, we are paid to make sense of results. Decades of bench work teaches techs to know what is expected and to focus on the unexpected. Many of the techs working today make what is difficult Read More...
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Barcode Your QI Part 3
June 10, 2009 5:49 AM by Scott Warner
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 Read More...
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Barcode Your QI Part 2
June 5, 2009 6:25 AM by Scott Warner
A barcode is data that can be read by an optical scanner. A laboratory instrument, for example, may read a specimen label barcode to query a host computer for patient demographics and test information. The point is twofold: you don't have to, and the Read More...
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Barcode Your QI Part 1
June 1, 2009 4:48 AM by Scott Warner
To reduce STAT turnaround time variation, you sometimes have to dig deeper. A chemistry specimen, for example, may have at least four stops before a result is sent from an analyzer to the information system to be verified: labeling, centrifugation, chemistry Read More...
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A New Marker
April 8, 2009 4:26 AM by Scott Warner
When I spoke with the diaDexus rep the other day on the telephone, he told me the PLAC test , a new test that measures lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A 2 (Lp-PLA 2 ), is being done in forty labs across the US, with another added every two weeks. Read More...
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New Thinking
March 11, 2009 10:27 AM by Scott Warner
When my son and I talked the other day about "green" technology, I suddenly realized the obvious: solar, wind and biofuel technologies are very old. (Think greenhouses, Don Quixote and wood heat). Is it possible to create new thinking with old technology? Read More...
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Paperless
January 9, 2009 12:39 PM by Scott Warner
We should be paperless by now. We have computers, interfaces, scanners and nursing point-of-care software. It should be easy. Yet we save instrument tapes of interfaced results, save work logs of microbiology specimens and print dozens of specimen labels Read More...
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Smear Art
August 11, 2008 11:48 AM by Scott Warner
Little these days is not automated. The art of laboratory medicine is vanishing, from spectrophotometers to Folin-Wu filtrates to Lee-White clotting times. I'd wax poetic about the meditative lure of bench work, but I don't miss mouth pipetting , spit Read More...
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To PDF or Not PDF, Part 4
July 30, 2008 3:24 PM by Scott Warner
At a previous position my manager ordered a replacement instrument exhaust fan. Since we didn't have the part, the instrument was useless. But a tech said with amazement, "I think I have one of those in my garage!" She went home and, sure enough, returned Read More...
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