Hi,

I am in my first semester of my graduate program at Michigan State University. I have worked in the clinical lab for about 20 years before I decided to go back to school full-time to finish my degree in two years. I'm in the Professional Science Masters track in Biomedical Laboratory Diagnostics. It's sort of half-way between a Doctorate and a Masters, sort of like an MBA. I have gotten really interested in the QA/QC management area and woudl like to develop my thesis in that area, but since I'm not currently working in the lab I'm having trouble deciding on a current clinical need. Does anyone have any ideas that I could possibly use as the basis for my thesis? Any clinical QA/QI developments someone would like to see analyzed? I'm also a Micro tech and am taking most of my science classes in that concentration, so I would love to have a public health or infectious disease aspect to my project, too. I need about a year to work on my thesis and that means I have to have the beginnings of my project brewing in my brain by early 2011.

Thanks,

Leslie

Current clinical need......QA/QC related......let's see.......(i'm just pulling stuff out of the air)

Lack of a standardized protocol when updating a SOP when new procedures or clinical technology is implemented.

Lack of a standardized protocol when an outdated and costly procedures are still being utilized or not being utilized but still updated in the SOP.  Failure of communication from technologist--->management---->QA to review and delete these procedures.

 Failure to implement a standarized protocol to track data related to mistakes caused by employees. This can determine if the mistake was employee performance related or clincal practice errors that need to be corrected in the SOP.

Failure to promote employee and QA continuing education concerning clinical practice. (yes, there are still labs that don't require employees to maintain ceus)