Cara Calvo, director of the Medical Technology program at the University of Washington contacted me on Monday about the Northwest Medical Laboratory Science Symposiumplanned for October 12-15, 2011 at the Lynnwood Convention Center, Lynnwood, Washington. She reminded me of a workshop I used to present with Lynn Quarles of Diagnostica Stago entitled “The Top Ten Problems in the Coagulation Laboratory.” I also thought about a recent comment by Herb Crown at the SLU Coagulation Reference Laboratory describing how they often receive orders for a factor XIII assay when the physician really wanted a factor VIII. Consequently, I am posting a new Quick Question about specimen collection errors, which should appear in the next day or two.
Meanwhile, I’d like to get your list of what you consider the top ten problems we face. Please respond using the comment link here or by sending me an email. Once we have a list, I’ll ask you to rank-order the problems. As an example, when Lynn and I started this, one of the biggest problems was the switchover from 3.8% to 3.2% sodium citrate collection tubes. You may not even be old enough to remember, but this was a major issue back in 1998.
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