Celebrating Laboratory Professionals Week

April 21-27 is the annual

ASCP Medical Laboratory

Professionals Week.

For those of you unfamiliar,

ASCP is the

American Society for

Clinical Pathology and it is

the licensing  body which holds lab personal to rigorous 

standards. Laboratory science is constantly changing and 

improving and as it does maintaining an ASCP certification

requires lab professionals to do the same.

Throughout the year  (as the lab is performing all the tests on

your patients) their skills  are maintained through required

continuing education courses, proficiency testing and annual

competency examinations. All to make sure that the results

released on every patient is both accurate and precise, to

facilitate the best treatment for the patient. Performing the tests

is only one aspect of a tech’s job, they also have to maintain all

instruments in the lab and validate the performance of each

analyzer used. While you may not see what goes on in the lab,

you may be familiar with the face of the lab, the clinical 

laboratory assistants. The CLAs are vital to the daily operations

of the lab and for patient care. They are our phlebotomy

experts and also are responsible for specimen processing,

running our outpatient centers and making sure the samples

get to right destination for testing, whether it’s in house or

out of state. So this week let’s help celebrate their hard work and

accomplishments. When they call with results or you see

them out and about collecting specimens; be sure to wish

them a ‘Happy Lab Week!’ and say an extra ‘Thank You!’ for

all they do.