When she isn’t developing strategic goals or thinking about ways to automate testing and improve efficiency in the laboratory, M. Sue Zaleski, MA, SCT(ASCP)HT, is working tirelessly as an advocate for careers in the laboratory professions. Whether speaking at conferences or making presentations to high school or college students and their parents, Ms. Zaleski, who is Clinical Pathology Laboratory Manager at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, Iowa, believes it is part of her professional responsibility to promote and educate people about the critical work performed by laboratory personnel. “Most people don’t understand at all what happens to their blood when it’s drawn,” said Ms. Zaleski, who also serves as ASCP’s 2011–12 Chair of the Council of Laboratory Professionals. “They don’t know that there’s a whole battery of lab professionals behind those tests. We can be invisible to both the patients and the rest of the healthcare team. We need to get outside of the lab and change that.”
Read more