Dec 5, 2012 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
To help improve the quality and accuracy of clinical pathology laboratory testing, many African nations are using ISO 15189 for laboratory accreditation
In many developing countries, both patients and medical laboratory professionals are making local headlines with their efforts to call attention the unacceptable number of errors made by clinical laboratories in their respective countries. This media scrutiny is a positive sign because problems must be recognized and acknowledged before they can be solved.
In recent weeks, Dark Daily published an ebriefing that described how pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals in Africa and the Caribbean were calling attention to unacceptably high rates of medical lab testing errors in their respective regions. (See Dark Daily: Public Outcry Over Inaccurate Medical Laboratory Test Results and Misdiagnoses Spurs Government Action in Developing Countries.)
The good news is that media reports about problems with medical laboratory testing quality in these developing countries have encouraged an organized international response. Medical laboratory professionals from developed nations are providing financing, equipment, onsite training and supervision specifically to raise the quality and accuracy of medical laboratory test results in many of these developing countries.
International collaborations aimed at building high-quality clinical laboratory services in developing countries are paying off. In some cases, this is directly related to the efforts of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and similar initiatives to improve the quality of clinical laboratory services in these resource-limited regions to support better disease detection and patient care. (more…)
Feb 22, 2012 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
From volunteer services, to replaced equipment, to outdated NCCLS materials, anything can be of help in poor countries where no medical laboratories come anywhere close to those of the caliber many of us take for granted.
Carla Orner never sleeps. No one as busy as she is has time to waste on even a little shut-eye. She is the full-time ambassador for Heart to Heart International. Her relationship with Heart to Heart International (HHI) began during her attendance at a regional meeting of a medical laboratory organization. “A speaker who was a HHI employee asked for medical laboratory volunteers to assist in its mission,” she says. The rest is history, as the saying goes! She works with doctors and nurses who volunteer, but her primary goal is to attract more medical laboratory technicians and technologists to join the volunteer effort through Heart to Heart. One tip that Orner shares with potential volunteers is that of the “mobile” CLIA license, which allows the establishment of a lab that can be operated anywhere in the United States. In all her experience in filling out forms for CLIA, Orner confessed, “I never saw the box labeled ‘mobile.’”
Orner also continues to present at CLMA and ASCP, among other organizations’ annual and regional meetings. For many years, she held a position as general manager of Regional Laboratory Alliance in Kansas City, MO, where she led an integrated network of community based hospitals and independent reference laboratories. Her 36 years of laboratory experience included night shift, evening shift, and 15 years microbiology. Among all of that, Orner was awarded a B.S. in Medical Technology from Central Missouri State University, and an MBA from MidAmerica Nazarene University. (more…)
