As a medical laboratory professional, I am all too familiar with the incessant phone calls from nurses and physicians asking a variety of medical questions. What tube do I draw? How much volume do need? Can I add a test on to a specimen? Often times, those scientists working “the bench” are already overburdened with […]
Read more "They Didn’t Know That?!?"Those of us in healthcare, and even those not in healthcare, and at one time or another have witnessed a business practice that could be constituted as questionable fraud. Fraud could be defined a couple of different ways: a) the wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain, and b) a […]
Read more "Fraud and Truth"As I take a brief break from non-stop writing, to write this blog post, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on a couple of things prior to my graduation in a few days. First, I thought it would only be fitting to share excerpts from my thesis acknowledgements page. It very much summarizes […]
Read more "Reflection"A question I commonly receive in my messages and emails is: “What types of questions do physicians ask?” It would be unreasonable to list every question I was asked by a physician because it would be boring after the first 50 or so, but I can certainly list a few of them. I will break […]
Read more "What Do They Ask?"It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a case … so here you go: A 53 year old female with a past medical history of hypertension, GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease), and depression presented to the emergency room with chest pains. Standard laboratory work-up including CBC, BMP, and troponin was ordered and all were completely normal. The […]
Read more "A Case & A Question"I am trying to keep my head above water in all of the work required, so I apologize for not being able to post as often as we would all like. As those of us in teaching facilities know, July 1st brought in a new wave of babies … aka freshly born MD residents. With […]
Read more "Wrath of the Younglings"While I have been feverishly writing what seems to be the miniature book called a doctorate thesis research proposal, I came across some curious statistics in the literature that I thought my readership would be interested in. From a study reviewing malpractice claims: “The most common breakdowns in the diagnostic process were failure to order […]
Read more "Why We Must"I must apologize to my readership for not posting as often as I was the first few weeks; let me just say that the amount of writing that is involved in obtaining a doctorate is … well … immense. I just realized after spending 14 hours today immersed in fine tuning my thesis research proposal, […]
Read more "An Emergency Consultation Request"Through this blog I have shared a few experiences of mine in reaching outside of the laboratory to work with the physicians and other healthcare professional to improve patient safety and patient care. Yes, to do consultation at the level that I have described, and will continue to describe this blog, advanced education beyond the […]
Read more "Empowering A Profession"I first want to thank everyone who voted in the poll in my last blog post. There has been a total of 266 votes thus far, and since I love statistics and analytics like every other scientist, here are the current totals: Question: What do you think about the DCLS? 48.65% I love […]
Read more "Take Me Out to the BAL Game!"
Road to DCLS 