I am so excited to be the new senior editor of MLO! To tell you a little about myself, for the past 15 years, I have been the editor of all the accreditation and certification standards at The Joint Commission. I love working with health care professionals and bringing crucial information to others. I love writing and editing and helping authors publish the best stories possible. However, if you would have told me 20 years ago I would be the editor of a clinical laboratory magazine, I would have laughed. I actually used to have a hard time with the tangible details of healthcare and would faint really easily! My first blood test…fell over on the floor. The same for the second and third! Once, a friend was telling me about her sister’s health problems, in explicit detail, and I had to ask her to stop because I felt hot, dizzy, and sick. Well, years later I experienced infertility. Consequently, I formed a close, regular relationship with my doctor, nurses, and a lab tech…I outgrew the fainting spells. At The Joint Commission, I found the opportunity to use my master’s degrees. But I also found a mission I believed in and developed a passion for healthcare. I’ve come to MLO with this experience and a passion to work with healthcare experts to publish valuable, high-quality information for our readers each month.
In this issue, we bring you the results of MLO’s State of the Industry survey results on disease management; a summary of the new CLIA regulations on proficiency testing; an article on blood conservation as a way to make meaningful improvements in hospital and laboratory processes, staffing resources, and patient quality of care; a special feature on lab techs’ roles in the summer 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal; an article on overcoming barriers to implementing or expanding the use of liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS); continuing education on connectivity and data management for point-of-care testing; and an interview with CLSI’s new CEO, Barb Jones.
I welcome your comments, questions, and opinions – please send them to me at [email protected].
