21 September 2015 (Monday) - A New Journal

A colleague told me about bloodjournal – there’s a lot of interesting stuff there. I shall have a look-see when time allows. If nothing else it will be something to do if the early hours of the night shifts are dull.

An example of the sort of thing is here:

 http://www.bloodjournal.org/content/126/12?sso-checked=true

20 September 2015 (Sunday) - Mott Cells

This picture was posted on the New Medical Laboratory Scientist Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207725932172064

It’s a Mott cell; a plasma cell with plentiful vacuoles. Don’t see them very often…

10 September 2015 (Thursday) - A Word of Thanks

An email received after a little episode in the blood bank:

Dear Dave   Yesterday I received a compliment from Dr –X- with regard to the support that they had received in theatre from the laboratory team. The patient underwent an open AAA 4 units. He was impressed with the speed of response to the bleep and the provision of components.  He felt that the prompt provision of components made a significant difference to the patient’s outcome. The patient has come through the surgery and is starting his recovery on ITU. Well done to all involved. Kind regards

This is what it is all about, isn’t it? 

8 September 2015 (Tuesday) - IBMS Newsletter

The IBMS e-newsletter came today… in the past I’ve been rather scathing about the IBMS e-newsletters. This one (I’m afraid) did nothing to change my opinion of the publication. With articles on HCPC renewals, IBMS congress, IBMS degrees and IBMS training courses, IBMS courses for support staff… there wasn’t actually anything of note for me personally.  

3 September 2015 (Wednesday) - Food for Thought

http://laboratory-manager.advanceweb.com/Features/Articles/Beyond-the-Biohazard-Door.aspx

Here’s food for thought….. so often I sit in the lab seething about what I see as the failings of the ward staff, the porters, the drivers, and everyone else. It is very easy to get blinkered and forget we’re all on the same side; just with different priorities

28 August 2015 (Friday) - IBMS Newsletter

https://www.ibms.org/go/nm/issues,45

The IBMS on-line newsletter came out today. In the past I’ve been less than enthusiastic about the thing.

This one started off well with an interesting article about on-line morphology training. However it did gloss over the cost. When I looked into this four years ago it wasn’t cheap.

There were then reminders about HCPC registration and IBMS Congress which really didn’t grip my attention.

It ended with a summary of the most popular posts on the IBMS’s Facebook page. I follow the IBMS on Facebook…. I suppose there were one or two snippets over the last month. None really come to mind. If they had I would have posted them here already.

27 August 2015 (Thursday) - Digital Morphology

The NEQAS digital morphology scheme answers became available today….

My answers

Rank	Morphological Feature	Participants who selected this feature
1	Blast cells	0.5%
2	Nucleated RBCs	88.5%
3	Howell Jolly Bodies	59.4%
4	Target cells	73.7%
5	Smear/smudge cells	3.3%

Everyone else said:

Rank	Morphological Feature	Participants who selected this feature
1	Nucleated RBCs	88.5%
2	Target cells	73.7%
3	Howell Jolly Bodies	59.4%
4	RBC Fragments/Schistocyte..	47.8%
5	Polychromatic RBC	32.7%

Could do better…. I’m intrigued by the software that said I didn’t actually participate yet it gave me what it said I reported. Having reviewed the film I’m more in agreement with the consensus than with what I supposedly said. I say “supposedly”…. I can’t remember what I put in the first place as it was so long ago, and as the software’s clearly made an error in say ing I didn’t take part and yet it assigned answers to me, I wonder if it recorded what I said correctly