Lynda, I could not agree with you more, about the idea that we laboratorians are actually our own worst enemy sometimes. The major reason why nurses have the power that they do is because they have chosen to be VISIBLE...at the patient bedside, at committees within the hospitals, in the community. Our insistence on remaining INVISIBLE, by never interacting in person with anyone in our workplace other than our colleagues, never getting our names, experience, education known on hospital committees, never speaking to our legislators when they are discerning topics about healthcare reform or medicare spending, why are we surprised that the role of the clinical lab professional remains a "black box" to so many? It is not hard to ignore a black box, and not pay a black box what it's worth when the black box doesn't even make the effort to get itself known more. We insist on people being mindreaders, and we will forever, as a profession, be invisible if we do. I am working very hard this year, as the 2009-2010 President of the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science, to turn that around and break open that black box once and for all! Come join the effort!