One of the advantages to being a laboratory professional is having a quality improvement mindset. While the rest of healthcare struggles with run charts, process mapping, and action plans, we live it. Our profession is uniquely data driven. It’s one of the big reasons no one knows what we do; unless you understand data, you won’t get ...

Meetings are supposed to be opportunities to realign, reassess, and repurpose. They can be a pit stop for a team to check the map, kick the tires, and make sure the bus is on track. But we’ve all been to too many meetings that end up being a demolition derby of mud slinging, tires spinning, fender benders, and totally pointless destruction. I ...

“People hate change,” we are lectured, as though it is a law of physics. Change is constant, change is expected, change is inevitable, but people will always resist it. Managers are told to expect that a certain percentage (17% or so) of employees will resist, block, and obstruct change no matter what. Oh well, those employees may have to ...

The question “Can I see you in my office?” has an air of being sent to the principal. The first thought that pops into my head is, “What did I do now?” I never liked this feeling as a bench tech, and it isn’t much more fun as a manager. The exchange sets up the meeting to fail right from the start. But it needn’t be so. Here are a few ...

Here it is, New Year’s Eve of 2012, an impossible year unimaginable to me as a boy, when 2001 seemed worlds away. It’s a natural break in the course of events to consider what succeeded, what failed, and what we need to try again. Success is always just around the corner. It’s also a chance to stop the world a moment, get off, and kick the ...

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 ...

It’s time to choose a new main chemistry analyzer. Sometimes this choice is easy: there is one vendor on a group purchasing organization (GPO) contract or one analyzer has a unique menu. Other times, it simply comes down to cost. Here are a few points to consider, in no particular order: Cost. It always, always, always comes down to ...

When there is an error caused by a breakdown in a process, usually two things happen at a management level: blame is assigned and a fix is applied. The blame can be inside or outside the department, personal or systemic. If outside the department, the manager applies the fix by going to the manager of the other department. Thus, I get a ...

There’s a sense that policies and procedures have to be idiot proof to avoid making errors. The simplest, most direct instructions that eliminate thinking also eliminate error. “Idiot-proof” means “built, organized, written, etc., in such a way as to be usable by or understandable to any person of average intelligence or skill.” This kind of ...

Jargon has always been used and does have its place in our communication. Just imagine if a physician wrote out the full name of every test, procedure and medication for every patient very time. In medical lab science where would we be without QC, CBC, CMP, FBS, ESR, PT and the like? Abbreviations are handy and useful. There are also times when ...