Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Kim Von Ahsen, MHA, MLS(ASCP)CM, SLS(ASCP)CM, ASCLS President If you’ve had a chance to meet me or hear me speak about my career journey, you’ll know I managed a movie theater before I went into the laboratory profession. I loved working in the theater—endless popcorn and screening movies…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Heather Herrington, DVM, MLS(ASCP)CM, ASCLS Ascending Professionals Forum Chair Let’s get this out of the way right from the very start—I’m a hypocrite. When I came up with the idea for this article, there was no doubt in my mind it was a subject that needed to be…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Jeremiah Oh, MDxT(AAB), Developing Professionals Forum Secretary, ASCLS-Georgia Developing Professional Director During my time in my academic program, I’ve found that for many students such as myself, topics like patient safety or professional ethics can often come across as an abstract concept—an afterthought that sometimes takes a back…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Miles Tompkins, MLT(ASCP)CM, ASCLS Board of Directors With the challenges that shortages bring to an already exhausted laboratory workforce, it can become easily justifiable for some facilities to grab anyone off the street who can hold a pipette to sit at a bench and put them to work.…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Benjamin D. Galvan, MLS(ASCP), CIC, CPH, ASCLS Patient Safety Committee Member As a recent graduate of the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center clinical laboratory science program in 2015, I was rapidly immersed into my first healthcare-related role in the microbiology department. Working in a large, academic…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Diane Davis, PhD, MLS(ASCP)CMSCCMSLSCM, ASCLS-Maryland Board Member and ASCLS Region II Treasurer Accurate reference intervals for transgender patients significantly influence patient safety and are also an ethical obligation of medical laboratory professionals. First, a short vocabulary lesson from GLAAD to ensure that the following information is clear. Transgender…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Carlo Ledesma, MS, MLS(ASCP)CMSHCMDLMCMQLSCM, MT(AMT), ASCLS Diversity Advocacy Council Councilor-at-Large In emergency medical situations involving an exsanguinating patient and the ABO type is unavailable, uncrossmatched group O RBCs is the axiom of clinical management until the appropriate ABO/Rh type and pre-transfusion testing is completed. The current guidelines in…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Donna Showers, MS, MT(ASCP), FACHE, ASCLS Region V Government Affairs Committee Chair Healthcare should not be a siloed care delivery model. A well-run healthcare organization has all departments working in collaboration to achieve clinical, operational, and financial excellence. So, where does the clinical laboratory fit into this model?…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Melody Boudreaux Nelson, MS, MLS(ASCP)CM Artificially intelligent clinical decision support systems (AI-CDSS) offer the clinical laboratory a unique avenue for interdisciplinary collaboration in value-based healthcare models. Laboratory data is largely independent values that can be organized and relational to a patient’s condition. This is commonly referred to as…
Volume 36 Number 6 | December 2022 Saint Louis University, Quest Diagnostics Team up on Innovative Partnership to Address the Shortage of MLS Professionals Nationwide Amanda Reed, MAE, MLS(ASCP)CM Medical laboratory science, the heartbeat of America’s healthcare system, is in distress. The meteoric rise in services—medical laboratory scientists perform an astounding 14 billion diagnostic tests…