As the years go on, I have noticed a steady decline in the ability of candidate students to conduct a successful interview. The ability to confidently sell yourself and provide a potential employer or professor a well-rounded view of your personality and professional qualities can really take you far in life. However, it seems this talent is an ...

Those of us in the laboratory profession know our scene all too well. Closed off from much of the world, listening to the hum of our instruments and running analysis after analysis, and loving every minute of it! I feel comfortable in this environment and even thrive in it, as many other that share my profession. However, are we getting the most ...

You are what you say. You tell stories and express yourself using words, just like a book. What you say and how you say it lets people know if you’re a textbook, novel, autobiography, or gibberish. And yes, people judge you by your cover. It happens, and some people don’t mind. Our speech is tempered by advertisers, television, and peers. We ...

As our hospital Safety Officer, I’m involved with disaster planning. This includes writing plans and planning for drills. Code Red, for example, is a fire emergency. While drills are regularly held by the maintenance crew, these involve checking the plant to make sure bells sound, doors close, the call system works, etc. and not primarily staff ...

I admit that every once in a while, I find myself dealing with a student that is struggling to learn the basic and essential principles of the material we are teaching while the rest of the class has moved on and ready for new material. By no means, are these weak students. They have met the rigorous admission criteria and their academic records ...

Last blog, we talked about receiving criticism and offered a few practical suggestions on how to take it. In this blog, I want to discuss how to give a negative feedback. In your role as a supervisor or a teacher, it becomes your responsibility to be a coach, a counselor, and a disciplinarian. It is critical that feedback is given in a ...

August is here and most schools are opening their doors for new and returning students. For those entering our beloved profession, I am pleased to welcome you to an exciting and dynamic profession.  It is critically important for you to realize that health care providers and employers require graduates who are not only technically ...

At COLA, we’re all part of the same work community. Together we help promote patient safety by promoting lab excellence. Considering that lab testing impacts more than 70 percent of diagnostic decisions, the COLA community’s efforts impact a lot of people. Individually, however, we are all part of two other communities: The lab community in ...

No one likes to be rejected whether in a personal relationship or for a professional employment opportunity. While I am not an expert in providing advice for broken personal relationships, I can shed some light on handling professional rejection. Let’s face it, for any job opening, many people will apply, but only one will get the job. It does ...

Occasionally, we post a question on our Facebook page that gets a lot of responses. On Thursday, we posted a question that sparked an interesting set of responses. That simple question was, ''If you couldn’t be a laboratorian, would you want to be a nurse?'' Overwhelmingly, the answer was ''NO!'' Here are few of the selected responses thus ...