Great Ideas to Get You Started

It's so often said that laboratorians are unsung heroes. Here's your chance to sing! Here are some winning ideas for attracting attention for Lab Week.

• Begin wearing the official NMLPW button early so your colleagues will know Lab Week is coming—those who remember last year's fun will be eager for more.
• Send a powerful message to administrators with an invitation to your NMLPW coffee enclosed in a Lab Week mug or travel cup. This would also work for tour invitations to local medical reporters—newspapers, radio or TV—who may never have seen your lab.
• Team up with your institution's public relations department in preparing media releases for newspapers and radio and television stations. You can help by developing a first draft using the tips and samples that follow. Also contact the editor of your institutions' employee and community newsletters to place stories about the laboratory.
• Are you affiliated with a managed care group? Do they have a newsletter for members? Pitch a story idea about laboratory medicine as preventive medicine.
• Check the editorial pages of local newspapers and magazines. You'll find information about submitting an "op-ed"(opinion-editorial) piece. Pick a topic—it might be the cost of health care, the importance of early detection in treating disease, or "It's Lab Week, a special time to recognize the professionalism and dedication of medical laboratory personnel"—and you'll find the pen is mightier than the sword.

Letters to the Editor

Do you read the "Letters to the Editor" column in magazines and newspapers? These are widely read and are an excellent way to praise a great story or to correct misinformation. If you think an article about laboratory testing is terrific and a real service to the public, write, fax, or e-mail the editor and thank them for a great job—remember how everyone loves recognition? By the same token, if you see misinformation in an article, contact the editor to politely but firmly correct it.

The more letters an editor receives, the more likely the topic will be revisited. You can always contact the ASCP Communications Department for help. Here is sample copy you can adapt to suit your needs.

Dear Editor:

As a laboratory professional, I was pleased to see the article in your recent issue regarding the importance of Pap smear testing. However, you did not note that laboratory professional organizations urge women to have a Pap smear test every year. Annual testing has saved thousands of women from contracting cervical cancer by detecting cells at a precancerous stage. Please inform your readers that a regular Pap smear test each year is vital preventive medicine and highly cost effective.

Sincerely,

Things to Do at Your Institution

Program your answering machine with a Lab Week greeting and a new message each day. Some labs have created hot lines with recorded NMLPW messages, another excellent medium for informing and educating people.

Don't forget the hundreds of laboratory test reports you generate each day. You may be able to program the computer to include an interesting laboratory fact on every report—an idea that can be used all year long.

Does your institution have closed circuit television? team up with the media department that produces the programming and make the laboratory a continuing series! Follow a bag of blood from donor to patient and show the lab's vital role in testing. Take the camera on a guided tour, just as you would a person, so viewers feel, "I've been there!" Hold an interview with a pathologist, a medical technologist or several from various laboratories, a cytotechnologist, a histotechnologist or histologic technician, a medical laboratory technician, and a phlebotomist—with each explaining their work. Discuss "scripts" in advance, but be sure the final take is a warm, interesting description. Run these as one program or individual vignettes and be sure to do quick promos reminding viewers when they will air. A quality professional tape might be of interest to a local cable or independent TV station, too.

Internet Ideas

Put your Lab Week message on the "information super highway!" If your institution has a web site, provide stories, quizzes, games, and informational items to its browsers. If not, send people to this site, the ASCP Home Page at www.labweek.org for lots of information. This site will continue to grow, so set a bookmark and visit it often! Be sure to access the main page, too, for information about ASCP continuing education programs, publications, membership, and news items.

Create Your Own Laboratory Newsletter

Become your own media with a laboratory newsletter that debuts during Lab Week but continues throughout the year. Address you laboratory's client partners and provide information that will help them function more efficiently. Use it to announce a new test or discuss a new procedure. Include a column that features a different employee each issue and include all his or her credentials and education. And assume that if recognition is important to you, it is equally important to others. Highlight one of your clients occasionally and encourage them to contact you with newsy tidbits about their practices or cases where the lab played an especially vital role in patient care.

Send Out a Press Release

The more innovative and interesting your NMLPW article, the better chance that a reporter will spread your message to a broad audience. Choose attention-getting titles for programs, use quotes from experts, cite good example, and offer services that consumers need and want. View sample press release

• Use a journalistic writing style. Ask yourself, who?, what?, when?, where?, how?, and why? —then answer your questions and you have the gist of the story.
• Keep it short and simple - no medical jargon that readers won't understand. If you cite a procedure, explain it in simple terms with short sentences.
• The best press releases are TYPED double-spaced on one side of letter-size paper (8 1/2 x11"). The upper left-hand corner should include the subject, the name of the person submitting the article and a phone number for a contact person that can be reached during the day should the editor have a question. The subject of the release and the date the item should appear in the newspaper should also be at the top of the page. Each additional page should be numbered sequentially.
• After you prepare the press release, the next step is to get it published. That means contacting the editor or appropriate reporter at the publication. Call the newspaper first and get the name of a contact person (such as a medical editor). Or look for the name of a city editor, features editor or science reporter in the newspaper itself.
• Now mail the press release. Wait at least a week and follow up with a telephone call to make sure the right person received it. You can also offer to answer any questions at that time. The reporter may ask for someone to interview—have a name and phone number in mind. You might also mention that the reporter send a photographer to visit the laboratory (stories with photographs usually have a higher readership).