Can a Single Book Enable Your Middle and Senior Laboratory Staff?

Years ago I came across a 1997 edition of a book as a .pdf on the internet.  I thought the title a little funny and thus intrigued I read on.  Suddenly I was immersed in the first book that actually detailed my job functions as a Chief Laboratory Technologist.  Even though it was already a few years old it detailed many processes and functions I had figured out myself or from many different resources.  It provided a detail that I found very useful which helped develop my Personal Job Description.

I hope you are also intrigued and read on.  After finding this book on Amazon I bought my own copy and then gave away many copies from the 2020 edition to the 2023 edition.  I have given this book to Pathology Residents, Chemistry Fellows, my managers, my counter parts in my system's community laboratories, and my Specialists in my own department.  The Specialists in my own department I am calling in this context my "middle staff".   Can this book enable my middle and senior staff?  I say, if I have given away at least 20 copies, then I say emphatically YES IT CAN!

Here are the front and back covers:

Here is the description of the book you will find on Amazon (3/21/24):

How to be the Lab Director of a general hospital lab. Includes tutorials on: how to make a corrective action, requirements for proficiency testing, how to remediate proficiency testing failures, how to make a Plan of Correction (PoC), how to respond to CMS form 2567, how to put a new analyzer into service, how to do validation and verification, how to do quality assurance and root cause analysis, how to write a policy and/or procedure and how to respond to complaints and incident reports involving lab. Includes easy to understand explanations of accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, proficiency testing, correlation, reference range (also called normal values), critical values (also called panic values), Limit of Detection (LoD), Limit of Quantitation (LoQ), ruggedness, robustness, linearity, Analytic Measurement Range (AMR), controls, calibration, false positive, and false negative as applied to the clinical lab and diagnostic lab testing. This book includes information on how to start a new lab, lab planning and budget, how to verify a Laboratory Developed Test (LDT) or "off label" test, qualitative analyzer verification, how to make an Individualized Quality Control Plan (IQCP), how to perform voluntary closure of a laboratory. information on how to helm a hospital lab through a major disaster, and information on Lab Director liability (malpractice) insurance, recommendations on how to validate microbiology organism identification and antibiotic sensitivity testing. The section on Individualized Quality Control Plan (IQCP) has an example IQCP. The 2023 edition includes information on lab testing in the COVID pandemic including SARS-CoV-2 test verification, SARS-CoV-2 specimen handling and pooling, laboratory expansion to accommodate SARS-CoV-2 testing and travel-related COVID testing, and how to reduce and reallocate laboratory resources after COVID test requests decline.

Can this book "enable" your staff?  Every time I have given this book there was a wiry smile on the face of the recipient, then their eyes widened when they saw the content. The current price for this concentrated textbook for your laboratory staff is less than $11.00.

Why THIS book? It says "How to be a Lab Director".  Your middle and senior laboratory staff have a fundamental job description to SUPPORT their Laboratory Management and Medical Directors.  Knowing the responsibilities of these people, and having the technical skills to do so, ENABLES them to do so.