A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend my very first Laboratory Enrichment Forum, COLA’s own national laboratory conference. This year it was held at the Gila River Resort in Chandler, Arizona. The venue and outside environment were beautiful, the food was delicious and I was able to meet new and accomplished laboratorians from all over the country.
The Laboratory Enrichment Forum (LEF) is a national meeting of laboratorians where expert speakers lead lectures and break-out sessions focused on laboratory leadership, quality, regulations, pathology and emerging laboratory trends. The LEF welcomes everyone in laboratory science to this conference, whether they are affiliated with a COLA-accredited laboratory or not. Besides the educational sessions, there are two separate tracks that attendees can participate in concurrently with the LEF. They are the Laboratory Director Track (LDT) and C.A.S.C.A.D.E., a leadership development workshop.
As a pathologist, I’ve been a laboratory director for a small, moderate complexity laboratory, and a subchief for microbiology and cytology within a larger hospital laboratory. But I’m always open to learning more in the laboratory director arena, so I attended the LDT courses, earning 20 valuable hours of CME. With the new CLIA requirements for laboratory directors, this year’s cohort was an exciting mix of medical doctors, both non-pathologists and pathologists, and laboratory staff. The course was directed by Dr. Verlin Janzen, a family practice physician who directed the laboratory at Hutchison Regional Medical Center in Kansas for more than 20 years. Some of our COLA surveyors, technical training specialists and team leaders were among the subject matter experts delivering educational sessions. Nicole Colby, Kobina Shaffa, Chiquita Thomas-Benson and Felicia Hill Davis, among others, presented on several topics including preparing for surveys, competency assessment and proficiency testing. The courses within the Laboratory Director Track included the expected foundational topics such as an introduction to quality assessment, quality control, proficiency testing and procedures. However, I also appreciated the laboratory director insights given by Dr. Janzen. And it was particularly interesting to hear from the surveyor’s perspective what they look for during an inspection. The surveyors pointed to a wealth of resources available to COLA-accredited laboratories through COLAcentral.com where they can find templates for anything from a quality plan to PT reporting.
The LEF also included exemplary general speakers. In the main session, Dr. Octavia Peck Palmer from the University of Pittsburgh discussed her work as a clinical chemist and the importance of laboratory data as a means for ensuring health equity. Ms. Elizabeth Montgomery, National Vice-President of Clinical Practice Innovation and Population Health at the National Kidney Foundation, spoke about the importance of laboratory data to identify patients with chronic kidney disease. The keynote speaker was Dr. Owais Durrani, an emergency medicine physician in Houston, TX, who spoke about the importance of laboratory sciences and social media.
Overall, my time in Arizona at the LEF was time well spent! I was able to connect with my coworkers at COLA, make new connections with leaders and laboratorians from all over the country and continue to expand my knowledge base in pathology directorship and laboratory medicine. I’m looking forward to attending the next Laboratory Enrichment Forum in Nashville next year!