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Your Letters

June 1, 2009 Letters to the Editor


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Baby Boomer Cover Doesn't Reflect Generation

To the Editor:

Being a Baby boomer myself, I was interested to see what the article "What Baby Boomers Want" [Koehler A. 2009;21(9):10-11,13] would say about my generation. A few things I think you hit right on the head.

We are worried about our impending retirement or if we will even be able to retire at all.  We do want more flexibility in our schedules. We want to feel appreciated and utilized to our fullest potential. We just want to be valued.

Our generation has seen massive changes to the way laboratory work is done, the way hospitals are run and the way healthcare is managed. We'd like to think we have paid our dues and now would like to reap a few rewards for that, such as flexible scheduling and the end of pulling night shifts.

There is one thing I must take exception with and that is the image of the woman on the front cover. Maybe that is because, as you say, we baby boomers tend to think of ourselves as 10 years younger than we really are. Maybe it is because boomers think of themselves as young and hip, not old and done.

This woman looks a bit older and dresses the part of an older woman. We boomers would never wear a garden party hat, pearl earrings, makeup (especially cherry red lipstick) and our brand new outfit outside to work in our garden. It's more like our favorite faded jeans and a T-shirt from our latest vacation. Makeup, if we wore any at all, would be earth tones or naturals.

The woman on the cover gives us more of a feeling of the generation before ours-the generation of June Cleavers. And if there is something the boomer generation is not, it is a generation of June Cleavers.

So airbrush your cover, fade the jeans and put some dirt on her gloves. We boomers are an active, "go get 'em" generation not soon to be put out to pasture.

--Eileen Smith, MT(ASCP),
Senior medical technologist,
Hematology laboratory,
VCU Health System,
Richmond, VA 

Gen Y MT Values Boomer Relationships

To the Editor:

I read the article "What Baby Boomers Want," and also the letter from Paula Perry in the May 18 issue, "Boomer, Gen Y Relationship Is Essential." I thought you might also like to hear from a Gen Y laboratorian.

I have been working in the clinical lab for more than 3 years now. My first step into a "real lab" was at the age of 19, when I began my clinical rotation or internship at a moderately-sized hospital lab. At that time I was bursting with excitement, and I was so anxious to begin using all the skills I had acquired in school. However, I was also terrified.

I am so thankful for the wonderful relationship I soon formed with the baby boomer generation. I was eager to glean any advice I could from them. To me, they were masters of a trade, and I was a young, inexperienced apprentice, ready to soak up all new information like a sponge. These wise techs took me and other Gen Yers under their wing, and made sure we didn't get left behind.

At my current job, I still look at these wonderful people as mentors. Many of my coworkers are old enough to be my parents, but we all get along great. They are incredibly patient with me. I still get excited when I see something rare or amazing, and they will humor me by patiently listening or looking at my great "discovery" (aka pseudo-parasite, artifact, etc.)

I want them to impress their wisdom upon me, because I know they possess knowledge I can't acquire by all the studying and reading possible. Their experience is worth more than that. They taught me everything about the lab that you can't learn in school. Most importantly, we all respect each other.

I am so glad the baby boomer generation is so willing to patiently teach and foster a relationship with the Gen Y generation. We need your support and your experiences to help us become the best laboratorians we can be! Thank you!

--Melanie Le Blanc, MT(ASCP),
Generalist,
Cullman (AL) Regional Medical Center
 

One Certification Will Clear Up Confusion

To the Editor:

I had to respond to the letter to the editor entitled "Are MTs Represented By the Wrong Group?" [Palamidis E. 2009;21(7):7].The author of that letter complained the power is with ASCP. She said it is an organization represented by individuals who are not part of the field, and yet she supports ASCP by using the MT(ASCP) certification at the end of her own letter.

In order to support an organization for clinical laboratory scientists, we all need to use a certification administered by clinical laboratory scientists in all of our correspondence and publications. Currently that certification body is NCA, although unification of the certification bodies is in progress.

Hopefully, the unification of these two bodies will combine the best of both while allowing for certification "of the profession, by the profession." One certification body should help to clear up much of the confusion about our profession.

--Sharon Strauss, MS, SM(NRM), CLS(NCA)


Your Letters Archives
 

To: Matthew T. Patton, Editor

In reference to, "How To Win In Office Politics," appearing in the Sept. 7, 2009 Vol. 21; No. 18 edition of "advance for Medical Laboratory Professionals." It truely is a sad day when a professional magazine abandons the virtues that made a prfession and a contry great. Politics and tempers have absolutely no place in science.

Politics has ruined this once great contry of ours. What makes you think this seven headed surpent won't ruin science or medicin in general? Oops, strike that, it allready has.

Its probly better to axe those who play politics with the, imperical facts needed to properly care for patients. Simply ban them from science all together. With them and there polotics we have had only imperical non-facts.

They are truely the reason patients die, research is forged or ghoast written and the USA has fallen far behind the curve. As well, temper tantrums should have been done with in grade school not post graduate school.

Good Luck With The Polotics
Chris

Chria Mele,  Medical Technologist (Lead Tec,  Small HospitalNovember 02, 2009



I read the article “Bracing For A Bio-Katrina” and was surprised by what I read, while I agreed with a lot of what was said, there was however some comments made by Dr Guidotti I believe was off mark, the notion that terrorist will choose only one of the more well known viral disease is rather short sighted of pretty much every one, as a MLT student I’ve spent many hours studying and have found many lesser known microorganisms that are just as deadly but more difficult diagnose, as a former EMT, police officer, and emergency management director from a rural city in Oklahoma, and a Navy veteran, I as we all should know that even a small event to make a major disaster. While the September eleventh attacks were well planned and devastating, the anthrax letters that followed in the weeks and month after 9/11 should have taught us that anyone who is determined can attack from anywhere. The belief that our boarders will protect us from attack one of the worst dreams there is, hundreds of illegal immigrants cross the U.S. - Mexican boarder every day, if we cannot stop people looking for a better life than the one they have how are we going to stop terrorist bent on destroying our way of life? An important reminder for all of us is the fact that prior to 9/11 the most devastating terrorist attack in America was the April 19th 1995 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which was carried out not by foreign terrorist but by home grown terrorist.
One of the most important things to remember is that if a half a dozen people that are determined and willing to make themselves walking incubators for disease were to strike not in the giant cities such as New York, Dallas or Los Angeles but in two or three of our medium cities like Little Rock, Kansas City, Portland or the dozens of cities that anyone of us could name at the same time, the health care systems of those cities could be quickly overloaded and the disease or diseases of choice could be quickly spread to the suburbs and the rural areas around them with devastating effect. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” We must assume the worst so that we may prepare for it. We must not assume that only a written plan of action is sufficient to prepare us for a disaster, without both regular and surprise drills an overwhelming event could happen and cripple our ability to respond in a sufficient manor. Couple this prospect with the desire by some to have a state run health care system and an attack of any size would be devastating, while the statements of Dr. O’Toole may seem to be doom and gloom they are in fact more realistic as to how we should prepare for what we all as Americans and everyone in health care hope will never happen, that there will be a Bio-Katrina at some point in our future.


William Hickerson,  student,  Northeast State Tech CCSeptember 27, 2009
Blountville, TN



The merger between ASCP and NCA has great potential as does any merger. It also carries the risk that major merger carry as well. We can gain recognition from peers in the medical field. To do so we must represent ourselves at the professional level for which we want to be recognized. We must set a fresh
standard that will give everyone no choice but to see
us for the professional health care workers that we have always been and will always be. I personally love the field of work I have chosen. It has it's up days and it's down days, but every day I am helping in some way to make life better and that can do nothing but make you feel good.

Phillip Gifford,  CLSup/CLS(NCA),MT(AMT)September 07, 2009
KY



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