CLINICAL LAB SCIENEC

28
ESSENTIALS OF CLINICAL LABORATORY SCIENCE
Commission on Colleges
(COC)
Cytotechnologist
Director (medical laboratory)
Doctor of osteopathy (D.O.)
Equivalency testing
Health Care Financing
Administration (HCFA)
Histotechnologist
Illinois Society for Microbiology
(ISM)
Licensure
National Accrediting Agency for
Clinical Laboratory Sciences
(NAACLS)
National Credentialing Agency for
Laboratory Personnel (NCA)
Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA)
Pap smear
Pathologist
Physician offi ce laboratory (POL)
Pleural, pericardial, peritoneal,
and synovial fluids
Point-of-care testing (POCT)
Registration
Registry
Southern Association of Colleges
and Schools (SACS)
The Joint Commission (TJC;
formerly JCAHO)
U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services
U.S. Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare
Waived tests
Introduction
Laboratories have become complex and valuable assets for a medical facility.
Organizational charts are needed for administration and for accrediting agencies,
which require that lines of authority and of communication be formally
established. Laboratories were originally only loosely organized, with the “technicians”
working directly under a doctor of medicine. If a hospital laboratory
was available at the turn of the 20th century, formal training and education of
physicians practicing pathology and the technical personnel working within the
facility were practically nonexistent. The laboratory was merely a minor tool in
aiding in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases until roughly the first quarter
of the 20th century.
Pathology training was not widely practiced in a formal manner until most
likely the early 20th century. Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General)
has documentation of autopsies being performed as early as 1811 by surgeons
and other physicians. However, it was not until James Homer Wright, director of
the Department of Pathology at Mass General in 1896, came into the forefront
of what we know as the practice of pathology that this field was embraced as a
distinct medical specialty and that most hospitals established a pathology department
that also encompassed the clinical laboratory as an adjunct to autopsies
and tissue examinations (http://www2.massgeneral.org/pathology/history.htm).
In today’s laboratory, the pathology department includes the clinical laboratory
and falls directly under the CEO of the medical facility, as shown in the organizational
chart in Figure 2-1, which closely resembles the structure of most
hospital laboratories today.
Clinical and Anatomic Pathologist/Director
The director of a medical laboratory is usually a pathologist, who has either an
M.D. or a doctor of osteopathy (D.O.) degree and who is typically board certified
by the American Board of Pathology as an anatomic or a clinical pathologist.
Pathologists perform specialized procedures on tissues and cells from organs of
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.