CLMA Industry Pulse

New: eCommunity Discussion Forum

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Do you have an industry-specific topic or question you would like to share with your peers? If so, visit CLMA's new eCommunity Discussion Forum to exchange tips, tricks and best practices with your colleagues solved challenges that could exist in your lab. The forum is open to CLMA members. If you aren't a member yet, join now to take advantage of this career development opportunity.

Mouth pipetting: Blogger reminds medical laboratory technologists of an era when this was leading source of clinical laboratory-acquired infections

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Mouth pipetting was the topic of a recent blog published by Body Horrors. The blogger recalled a time when clinical laboratory professionals routinely mouth pipetted specimens. Mouth pipetting is the practice of using one's mouth to suck a desired volume of a medical laboratory specimen — blood, urine, cell cultures and other microbial stews — into an open-ended tube, using the reduced air pressure created by sucking to hold the specimen in place while moving it to another vessel.

KnowledgeLab 2013 education on demand sessions now available for purchase

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Recordings for select KnowledgeLab 2013 sessions are now available for purchase for the CLMA member price of $49 or nonmember price of $79. View the presentations from sessions you missed, or download all the sessions if you were unable to attend the conference. CEUs will be awarded.

A bright future

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

In a time of explosive advances in diagnostics and a changing workforce, clinical laboratorians are poised to succeed as a critical piece of the patient care puzzle — and the job outlook is looking increasingly bright.

Group health cooperative study uses EHRs and stepped interventions to double rate of colorectal cancer screenings

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Sophisticated use of electronic health records, automated reminder systems and telephone follow-up can double cancer-screening compliance by consumers. That could mean an increase in testing volumes for clinical laboratories serving clinics using this approach. Researchers at the Group Health Research Institute used electronic health records to identify Group Health Cooperative patients who weren't screened regularly for cancer of the colon and rectum.

24 leadership books to read before you die

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Besides being incredibly good for your brain, reading really does make you smarter. A well-stocked bookshelf can keep you focused on important leadership and management principles — some of which you might already have learned but need reminding of, and others that can spur challenges and opportunities to grow.

Handling job rejection

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Staying motivated is always tough, but it certainly gets easier when you start seeing results. That's why staying positive during a job search can be extremely difficult, especially when you're faced with repeated rejection and rarely receive any feedback. However, according to Candace Davies, ACCC, CRW, CIC, CPRW, CEIP, CECC, president and founder of Cando Career and Resume Writing, when you receive a job rejection, the most important thing to remember is to remain positive and believe that "one more job rejection is one step closer to a job offer."

3 ways meditation can make you a better leader

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Running a business can be an emotional roller coaster ride, and it's easy to get caught up in worries about the future or frustrations with the past. Meditation helps to center you in the present moment, making the trials of entrepreneurship more manageable and the lifestyle more sustainable.

6 things exceptional leaders do better

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Many business students believe that future leaders need a new set of leadership skills that recognize the new global economy that continues to be molded and shaped by rapidly changing technology and globalization. They aren't wrong. They are overlooking, however, the fact that fundamental leadership skills are characteristic of all great leaders, past and future. What differentiates exceptional leaders from great leaders, however, was not necessarily how to amend these characteristics but rather how to execute them better. Here are six things exceptional leaders do better.

Leaders: Listen for the train

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

We often do the same routines the same way for months or even years and don't realize when the process is broken. Then someone new joins the team and asks, "Hey, why are we doing it this way?" We look at them strangely, not really understanding what they're talking about. "Why wouldn't we do it that way?" Like a train horn you hear every day, it's easy to ignore the small, routine stuff and get caught in this trap of sameness and normalcy. But if we're truly going to lead our teams — or even ourselves — we need to look at our work a bit differently.

For women leaders, likability and success hardly go hand-in-hand

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

In their blog post, "New Research Shows Success Doesn't Make Women Less Likable," Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman conclude from their analysis of assessments of men and women leaders who have come through their leadership program that "likeability and success actually go together remarkably well for women." As a sociologist who focuses on gender, work, and family it is always nice to hear when things are going well for women at work.

Leadership is more than interpersonal skills

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Most of the 89,000 leadership books offered on Amazon.com focus on traditional interpersonal leadership: The relationships between leaders and followers. Interpersonal leadership sets up an expectation that leaders must be in dialog or at least in view of their followers. Yet this style of interaction is less likely as work stretches across locations and company boundaries as we telecommute, crowdsource and take on joint ventures. Modern leadership may be as much about facilitating strategy through hiring, training, technology and focused tasks and goals, as it is about face-to-face interaction.

Handling job rejection

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Recruiter pet peeves

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

What is the worst thing you can do when applying for a job? Lie. But it could take much less for your resume to end up in the trash can.

New tools for retirement

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

If there's one thing Americans have learned from the financial crisis of 2008, it's that they do not want to lose their money — again — especially for folks of a certain age.

Ethical issues for genetic counselors

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

If you could know exactly how and when you were going to die, would you want to? Think about it. Would you rise to the occasion and go sky diving or swim with sharks, facing your fears and resting easy knowing that it was not your time? Or would it get to you — the knowledge always in the back of your mind? The question is intended to perplex, and as it turns out, people continue to ask it even in some areas of the healthcare industry.

Cloud computing meets HIPAA omnibus

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Cloud computing and storage is an undeniable migration path and IT strategy. Overall spending on cloud technology is expected to reach an estimated $150 billion annually by 2014, according to a recent Gartner Group study. And within healthcare, 35 percent of health IT professionals surveyed said their organization was implementing or maintaining cloud computing in 2012, up from 30 percent in 2011 according to a new survey by Vernon Hills, Ill., technology vendor CDW.

Leadership in the 3-speed economy

15 May 2013 07:58:28 CDT

Is the economy in a recovery? The question today is almost meaningless. That's because "the economy" is an aggregate of three very different economies, each going at its own speed, each with its own dynamic and each with its own very different trajectory. Each of the three economies faces a different set of leadership challenges.