Deb Rodahl, MBA, MLS(ASCP)CM, 2017-18 ASCLS President Over the last few months, I have had the pleasure of attending four of our constituent society spring meetings. Our spring meetings are such a great opportunity to experience all the benefits of professional involvement. I noted with great interest one of our community questions posted by Kathy…
Holly Weinberg, MLS(ASCP)SH, Region Region VIII Director The Region VIII Leadership Academy (R8LA) graduated our fifth class of Interns at the ASCLS Annual Meeting in Chicago this summer. Now that we’ve been running for a few years, it’s time to look back and evaluate our program. First, how did we get here? In 2013, ASLCS…
Bev McCarron, Rutgers University The patient, a quadriplegic with an irregular heartbeat, was set to get a pacemaker when a test came back suggesting he had pneumonia, delaying surgery and lengthening his hospital stay. But when a medical team consulted at his bedside, Brandy Gunsolus, a Rutgers University clinical lab doctoral student and certified medical…
Linda Hickok, MLS(ASCP)CM, Political Action Committee Secretary The ASCLS/Political Action Committee (PAC) is a voluntary nonprofit organization created to provide financial and educational support for the election campaigns of responsible candidates for Congress. All PACs are legal, ethical, and strictly regulated by federal law, which limits the amount of individual contributions and requires full and…
Written in collaboration with ASCLS and ASCP Board of Certification Medical laboratory science associations’ blogs, discussion boards, and listserv lists are continually populated with questions concerning what to teach laboratory science students, how to prepare for the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) Board of Certification (BOC) examination, and what is or isn’t on the…
Jennifer Hawkins Randle, MSHA, CLC(AMT) The pre-analytical phase is viable in every aspect of a healthcare professional career. As laboratorians, we depend on phlebotomists for most of our preanalytical phase. It is not just the phlebotomists that the lab depends on for quality specimens. We depend on physicians and nurses to follow protocols and provide…
Cherika Robertson, MEd, MLS(ASCP)CM Excited. Nervous. Intimidated. Those were my initial feelings upon first arriving in Washington, D.C., for the 2018 Legislative Symposium. I had never thought of myself as being interested in politics, or much less as a lobbyist. But, I did know that I love the profession of medical laboratory science. And, this…
Payman Nasr, PhD, MT(ASCP) Distance learning is the result of progressive steps in the evolution of correspondence courses which had become popular in the first half of the 20th century. Over decades, as new technologies became commonplace, the correspondence courses adapted to the new technologies, until the 1990s at which time the internet became a…
Rebecca Matthews, MLS(ASCP)CM Imagine being a new graduate, fresh out of school and hungry for your first real job in the professional world. You have passed your certification exam and you begin searching for a generalist position in an effort to remain competent in all the disciplines. You are offered a position to work the…
Beth Warning, MS, MLS(ASCP)CM, Region IV Director If you worked in marketing, the term WIFM would be standard language. WIFM stands for “What’s in it for me?” indicating that at the base of all sales are the needs of your target audience. In terms of our Constituent Society State meetings, WIFM can beused to drive…