Since the ASCP took over the popular and progressive NCA in 2009, I have periodically received emails from medical lab professionals not happy with the merger for various reasons.  Prompted by this overwhelming response, I have previously blogged about this subject. I have also addressed the mixed response to the move. Recently I have ...

New graduates especially are familiar with the frustration of looking at an ad for a dream job only to see the dreaded ''experience required.''   In frustration, they argue, ''How can I get experience if no one will give me a job, a chance to gain some experience?'' But such frustration is not confined to new graduates. A colleague who ...

About a year ago I met a very engaging and outgoing young woman. She is a successful business leader and a Harvard graduate. There is not much exceptional about this, perhaps, except she is from a rural village in Jamaica and is the first in her family of nine siblings to graduate high school. I was fascinated by her MBA from Harvard but could ...

One of the most frustrating   issues for clinical laboratorians is that clinicians continue to misuse laboratory testing. Laboratory utilization is a hot potato because of increased concerns with cost (to the laboratory and payer), extended length of stay  abnormal test gets worked up) and patient concerns (Am I sick? What does this ...

It's election season and every time I log on to Facebook I am inundated with messages, notifications and newsfeeds (what's the difference between those last two, by the way?) about the elections and the presidential candidates. Some postings are benign but many are pretty inflammatory and a few border on having no basis in reality. Some are ...

  On July 4, 1776 the United States declared independence from Britain and a vigorous new democracy was born. This year we celebrate our 236th birthday and our founding fathers are probably sputtering in wonderment, ''Who knew this experiment in democracy would be so successful?'' When American patriots chose to defy King, Crown, a powerful ...

Professions periodically assess themselves in terms of their status, how they are perceived, the services they offer, and the value they bring to the public. Outside of healthcare this often translates to a simple name change. For example the legal profession in many countries made a conscious decision to swap their LLB (bachelor of laws) degree ...

  There are so many customer service buzzwords that I thought I had pretty much heard them all. One method that I had not heard of until a week or so is a device advocated by the Studer Group. Called the Five Fundamentals of Service, the method uses the mnemonic AIDET (pronounced Aid it). AIDET stands for Acknowledge, Introduction, ...

Every organization these days has mission and vision statements. We all learn them at orientation. Some companies insist we wear them on name tags or ''buddy badges.'' Others have them plastered in elevators, hallways and in conference rooms. Everyone wants to be the ''provider of choice'' or something similar. Everyone respects patients and ...

The simple definition of ethics is '' a sense of right and wrong.''  And we all know that right and wrong are in the eyes of the beholder. Right?  Morals seem so subjective and personal. However, ethics as a science is not as subjective and malleable as this definition suggests. As individuals and healthcare professionals, medical ...