Stepwise Success

Recharge and Renew

Scott Warner — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:19:00 GMT

According to one Fox affiliate contributor, Ben and Jerry’s has a special nap room for employees. If you get too tuckered making Chunkey Monkey, you can bag a few zees. The National Sleep Foundation reports that sixteen percent of employers have similar...(read more)

Move Smarter

Scott Warner — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:59:00 GMT

Repetitive motion injuries are commonly caused by cumulative trauma to musculoskeletal joints such as thumbs, elbows, and shoulders. These have always been common in workplaces but there is greater awareness during these long days of people sitting at...(read more)

Ergonomics and Exhaustion

Scott Warner — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:25:00 GMT

When we renovated our lab design, moving walls, equipment, and refrigerators, one of the techs joked the newly opened space made it “walker ready.” “We aren’t getting any younger,” she said. That seems to be a theme these days. I’m not sure we’ll be working...(read more)

Ageism in the Laboratory

Scott Warner — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:57:00 GMT

Pardon the pun, but it’s an old story. According to the Hospital Council of Northern & Central California, “The average age of a CLS in California is above 50. There are not enough new CLSs in the pipeline to equal the numbers currently working but...(read more)

We All Want Simple Solutions

Scott Warner — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:24:00 GMT

It’s easy to make solutions more complicated. When there are holes in a schedule, one can create multiple rotation lists with conditional rules. When quality control is out, one can apply more Westgard rules than are needed. And when microscopic cellular...(read more)

Corrective Action

Scott Warner — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:02:00 GMT

Corrective action is a beautiful thing. When quality control is out of limits, running a fresh control that is acceptable saves time, avoids an irritating sample look back, and reassures the tech. When a weak blood bank reaction in all tubes disappears...(read more)

Reproducible Cutoffs

Scott Warner — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:25:00 GMT

A million monkeys on a million microscopes probably couldn’t bang out an accurate WBC differential in a million years, but a lab tech could teach a gibbon to run a chemistry analyzer in about ten minutes. I’m kidding. But the subjective variability of...(read more)

Improve Your Criteria

Scott Warner — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:04:00 GMT

An acronym pulled from the alphabet soup is CQI, or Continuous Quality Improvement. Managers and quality improvement people use this to show that everything can be improved, even processes that work. Continuously trying to improve quality generates incremental...(read more)

Why Fasting?

Scott Warner — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:58:00 GMT

Each day, I see people arrive for work after they have had breakfast at home. They sometimes arrive with coffee. Within two hours or so they go to morning break and eat a muffin, fruit, or some other snack, often with more coffee. Two hours later they...(read more)

Keeping Benchwork Exciting

Scott Warner — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:02:00 GMT

The other day after I explained a change in microbiology an employee told me, “That’s three times you’ve used the word ‘exciting.’ That’s not a word I would use.” This was said in good humor, but the point is valid. Slogging out results day in and day...(read more)

Your Work, Your Family

Scott Warner — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:11:00 GMT

Stress is big trouble in all our lives. It seems to me that we can handle stress at work or home but not both. Life being what it is, stress seems to jump from one to the other and seldom sits still. At home, family can help us cope with stress. Does...(read more)

Is Scripting Bad?

Scott Warner — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:03:00 GMT

We encounter scripting all the time. When calling customer service, at the end of the call, the representative says, “Have I answered all your questions today?” In a restaurant, a waiter will say, “My name is Matt, and I’ll be your server.” And at the...(read more)

Can You Read Expiration Dates?

Scott Warner — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:02:00 GMT

A common task we are expected to perform is checking expiration dates on reagents, controls, and other dated materials. Boxes are crowded with different languages, vials are smaller, and eyesight fades with age. I remember vividly the moment when I couldn’t...(read more)

Self Control

Scott Warner — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:00:00 GMT

We all have moments when we lose self control, usually under stress of some kind: frustrated by highway traffic, pressed for time, shopping in a crowded store, irritated by arguing. In a similar way, stress in the laboratory can cause us to lose self...(read more)

Great Meetings

Scott Warner — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:08:00 GMT

We all know what a great meeting feels like: we’ve solved a problem, decided on a course of action, aired differences, repurposed and refocused, or learned something important. We leave the meeting feeling energized, refreshed, important, and valuable....(read more)