Tools, Technologies and Training for Healthcare Laboratories

Ring in the New Year, Please

Wisconsin is covered with snow, some 18 inches has fallen here in Madison, schools are closed, the University students are staging the biggest snowball fight ever, and I’m “homebound” until the streets get plowed.  It seems like a good time to stop and think about the past year and start planning for the next year.

December 2009

Many thanks to you for a good year!

I’ve had opportunities to see many of you at meetings in Canada, Spain, Argentina, Chile, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Italy, as well as conferences and workshops in the US.  Sten has also spread his wings and traveled to China, Norway, Denmark, and Puerto Rico, as well as several places in the US.  We very much appreciate your warm reception around the world!  Joan, Sten, and I are privileged to have your support and friendship.

But let’s close out the old year!

Here in the US, it has been a difficult year for healthcare and medical laboratories, and we are waiting to see if things will get better or worse in the near future.  It has been disappointing to watch the legislative process in Washington DC and to realize that private interests take priority over public health in our political process.  I know it is impossible to explain this to those of you outside the US, and believe me, many of us here can’t make any sense of what is happening either.

One major disappointment this year has been the decision to close the Clinical Laboratory Science program at the University of Wisconsin.  I’ve not spoken about this on the website because of the local politics, but this is a symptom of the lack of understanding and respect for laboratories and clinical laboratory scientists in the medical world.  Unfortunately, this is not just a local problem, but symptomatic of the medical community at large.  There are many people who are working hard to improve the conditions for laboratory scientists and to attract new people to the field, but the success of those efforts will be limited if the medical community itself does not support laboratory medicine and clinical laboratory scientists.  Our fragmented professional organizations offer little help in solving these serious problems.  My hope for the New Year is that laboratory scientists find a way to stand up and demand the respect we deserve!  Our good works evidently are not enough to earn that respect, therefore we need to find another strategy to demonstrate our contributions to patient care and the quality of healthcare.  I have jokingly suggested we need one national holiday from healthcare testing, rather than a week of token recognition.  Drastic problems tend to require drastic solutions.

And make plans for the New Year!

Meanwhile, back at WQC, we’ve been working hard this year on new educational and training materials and an improved website for delivering those materials.  The revamped website has been a long project, but we now have better organization and management of the materials that have been developed over the years.  We’ve had some bugs but they are getting worked out and we hope you are now having a better experience when you visit us.
We postponed presenting workshops in Madison this past year because of the economic difficulties which limit travel and attendance at such programs. Instead, we provided a few road shows in Rochester, MN, Chicago, and Hamilton, Ontario, that were co-sponsored by other organizations.  We will continue to do this, but are also planning to provide some new education and training programs online and live in Madison.  We have just introduced a new online course on “Risk Analysis and Analytical Quality Management.”  The first module is available now and we will provide additional modules during 2010.  With the expected publication by CLSI of the new EP22 and EP23 guidelines on risk management and laboratory QC in early 2010, we know there will be a need for education and training in this area.  We will do that with online training, as well as a new workshop that will be presented in Madison on May 25-26, 2010.  As these training materials become available, you can also expect that we will provide hardcopy materials.

We will also provide a new one-day workshop on May 24 about Basic QC Practices, as an introduction and review for those who want (need) a refresher. Following that, we'll have the more advanced workshop on Risk Analysis and QC.   Basic QC and Method Validation practices are still critical, actually prerequisites, for the application of risk analysis and development of QC Plans and Analytical Quality Systems.

Another year older and hopefully wiser!


I am thankful to remain active in efforts to improve the quality of laboratory testing and of healthcare.  It is sometimes surprising to study new issues, such as risk analysis, traceability, and measurement uncertainty, and find that my earlier experiences and perspective are still useful.  Quality seems to be an enduring fundamental of laboratory testing and an understanding of how practices have evolved is still valuable for assuring quality in the future.

I do admit to slowing down and finding it more difficult to keep up the pace of travel.  I still logged about 75,000 airline miles this year, down from over 100,000 last year and over 125,000 two years ago, and I suspect this trend will continue as I settle into retirement.  I feel privileged to be working with Sten and to see him develop new capabilities for sustaining and improving our services.  Joan and I continue to have fun with this family business and have become fast friends with the people at the Post Office.  “Going Postal” now refers to our daily trip to mail out books and materials.

We are recruiting other “retirees” to work with us and this should actually expand our base of knowledge and our capabilities for addressing issues in quality management.  The field cannot afford to lose the knowledge and experiences of these “oldies but goodies” and we are hoping to access their “lessons learned” base of experience for your benefit.  We expect that you will start to see some of their contributions to our educational materials and training courses this coming year. We will continue to support your needs through our website, online courses, educational materials, and training programs.