Here's
something from the nice people at Lablogatory. Perhaps not of immediate relevance
to me, but it made me think. I didn’t realise that fungal infections are so
prevalent.
One lives and learns… by doing CPD
This is (supposed to be) a reflective diary by a (not very) anonymous biomedical scientist who works somewhere in the south of England. One day this diary may well be submitted to the Health and Care Professions Council as evidence of ongoing continual professional development....
10 January 2024 (Wednesday) - IBMS Update
The IBMS sent out its
monthly newsletter today. It had articles on the new president of the IBMS,
a political joint statement with a commercial company pointing out all the
problems the profession faces whilst offering no solutions, a plea for more
portfolio verifiers (something for which I volunteered and have heard
nothing)…
The whole point of CPD is detailed here. I won’t dismiss the IBMS
newsletter out of hand, but I will make the observation that more and more our
professional body is catering to a smaller and smaller proportion of our
profession.
Mind you as I’ve said before, the IBMS
is like a dustbin; you only get out of it that which you put in. And having
said that, am I wrong in thinking that putting in eighteen quid each month is
quite enough?
(there’s reflection for you!)
4 January 2024 (Thursday) - Complete Failure at BTLP-TACT
I had decided not to bother with
BTLP-TACT any more… I don’t so much mind getting it wrong as not knowing why I’ve
got it wrong. As I tell the trainees, stuffing it up is how you learn. But you
only learn *if* you find out where you went wrong. As a learning tool,
BTLP-TACT leaves a *lot* to be desired.
But I had two goes…
On each occasion I was given no cases so
I cannot have got it wrong… but both times it failed me for not doing that
which wasn’t there to be done.
So what do I do now?
3 January 2024 (Wednesday) - Horiba Newsletter
The nice people at Horiba sent their
morphology newsletter today. You can see it by
clicking here.
This could be a useful resourse…
This could be a useful resourse…
2 January 2024 (Tuesday) - Fritsma Factor Newsletter
The Fritsma
Factor newsletter came out today. More and more I’m finding I’m forgetting
so much about haemostasis. Back in the day we used to do so many more tests
in-house. These days pretty much everything is referred out to specialist
centres. Such a shame. But thre Fritsma Factor newsletter reminds me of that
which I would otherwise forget…
27 December 2023 (Wednesday) - 2306 DM
The results of NEQAS 2306 DM are out.
“A 60 year-old female who is known to
have hepatic cirrhosis becomes acutely unwell with a new anaemia (Hb 78 g/l).
Associated with her hepatic cirrhosis she has a long-standing moderate
thrombocytopenia. The clinicians are concerned about bleeding. What do you
report?”
I saw burr cells, target cells, spherocytes,
polychromasia, red cell fragments, acanthocytes, nucleated red cells, neutrophilia
and a reduced platelet count. I felt this was a haemolytic process.
It was actually “spur cell anaemia”;
something of which no one has ever heard. On the one hand you have to ask the
benefit of giving us something so obscure for an EQA. On the other hand, here’s
something for me to go and find out about.
22 December 2023 (Friday) - Stem Cell Evidence Alert
The Stem Cell Evidence Alert update
arrived in my in-box today. There was quite a bit of talk about allogenic stem
cell transplants. Back in the day we used to do quite a few of those… but they
don’t seem to be anywhere near as common these days.
Perhaps it is a “specialist centre”
thing and not something done is the district general hospitals any more?
ARTICLE OF THE MONTH Prospective Multi-Institutional Study of Eculizumab to Treat High-Risk Stem Cell Transplant Associated TMA.Jodele, S., et al. (2023) Blood [record in progress]PICO SUMMARY +++++ |
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