A Dull Day At Work...?

29 April 2020 (Wednesday) - Top Prize?

Having worked in pathology seemingly forever I’ve seen some changes (doesn’t that make me sound old!!) Some for the better, some for the worse. But in this morning’s email from “The Scientist” there is a worrying development.

In the past the departmental equipment has been bought by a fully documented procurement process. It might seem long-winded and laborious, but the idea is that public money is spent widely and accountably on getting what is the best bit of kit available for the specific job that needs to be done.

But today there are blood counters being given away as prizes from on-line competitions. The device might be really good; it might be a ple of crap... Who knows?
But is this any way to equip a laboratory?

29 April 2020 (Wednesday) - A Webinar?

I had an email from the British Blood Transfusion this morning, They told me of a webinar by the “Pathology Alliance” taking place this afternoon about…

Well, what it was about was rather irrelevant as I didn’t see the email until after it was all over. To be fair to the BBTS they had publicised the thing as soon as they knew about it. But I’m left wondering why on Earth people do webinars (which are broadcast at a specific time) as opposed to podcasts (which are not). Have these people never heard of YouTube?

And secondly who are the “Pathology Alliance”? I can’t find a website.

27 April 2020 (Monday) - Stem Cell Evidence Alert

The nice people at the Stem Cell Evidence Library sent their update today. You can read it by clicking here.

There were some interesting articles, but what I liked most was that the thing wasn’t entirely dominated by talk of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

As a patient undergoing anticoagulation said to me the other day “I honestly feel that if you haven’t got the virus, you might as well piss off”…

27 April 2020 (Monday) - Transfusion Evidence Alert Update

The nice people at the Transfusion Evidence Library sent their update today. As usual there was far too much to take in at once, but there were some rather interesting insights into the impact of the ongoing pandemic on the blood bank.

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLE

Deployment of convalescent plasma for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19
E Bloch, et al. J Clin Invest

24 April 2020 (Friday) - ASH Update

The American Society of Hematology sent their newsletter today. You can read it by clicking here.

One article caught my eye. It’s no secret I’ve long been critical of these so-called scientific conferences and symposia. For every one person there to learn, it has been my experience that there’s one there to have a good old catch-up and booze-up with his mates.

One of these meetings has been identified as a “super-spreading event” in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

I’ve long said that these meetings would be far better if replaced with a load of downloadable podcasts. And here’s another reason for doing just that…

24 April 2020 (Friday) - IBMS Newsletter

The IBMS sent their newsletter today. You can read it by clicking here.

Again (at the risk of appearing critical) it’s at best only of peripheral interest to me. But again I’ve not contributed anything myself. Perhaps I should?

23 April 2020 (Thursday) - Oncology Central Update

The nice people at Oncology Central sent their update today:

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