CLINICAL LAB SCIENEC

64
ESSENTIALS OF CLINICAL LABORATORY SCIENCE
where there might be some contact with patients and with sensitive records of
medical testing. All people deserve appropriate health care and the ability to enjoy
a sense of well-being, regardless of their respective stations in life or their status
related to having a disease, whether chronic or acute . Those who are stricken by
an illness or permanent or temporary condition should expect to be treated by
health care providers who possess not only professional competence but also the
appropriate compassion and caring needed to ensure comfort during illness or
recovery from illness. In other words, all health care personnel should be professional
in all matters related to a patient and the care rendered. Social issues,
ethnic issues, and those of psychological or religious matters should be treated
with due respect.
Organizations for the various medical professions have been founded over
the years to ensure that health care providers have attained the credentials necessary
to perform certain duties in a medical facility. These organizations may
be on a state or national level, as previously discussed. They always involve
members of their own professions who play a role in governing these professional
organizations. Almost all health care professions require a certain level of
credentialing and adherence to standards, as will be discussed in a following section.
This is typically done by licensing or by a registry examination developed
by the organization dedicated to a particular profession. All of these organizations
exist to protect the public from unscrupulous and unprofessional practices.
All medical professions have components in both their education and training
that deal with the sensitive issues of personal facts related to the patient.
It is also part of a patient’s rights to be treated by a practitioner who is
knowledgeable in the area in which he or she is employed. The professional
organizations were at least in part established to have input into the education
and training processes for students seeking a career in one of these health care
professions. That is why there is an organization for most of the health care
professions that accredits educational programs; in some cases the same organization
may administer a registry or licensure examination to ensure competency
when state licensure is not required.
As a general statement, professional groups and accrediting bodies require
certification or registry to become members, while government organizations
require licensure . Certification and registry may be viewed as somewhat of a
quasi-legal requirement, since most health care organizations will not hire
unqualified and uncertified personnel. Processes leading to certification, registry,
or licensure usually require an examination developed to ensure competency by
meeting certain standards established by a particular professional organization
or a professional testing agency. These examinations are administered to qualified
candidates to determine competency of the individual prior to the person
performing professional duties in a health care facility. Medical organizations ,
which exist to document that standards of care have been achieved to their satisfaction,
also have codes of ethics by which they operate and to govern behavior
of its members. Personal and institutional practices and standards of behavior
exist, often in formal documents, which are to be adhered to by each member of
the professions represented within a medical care facility. Professional organizations
that govern medical facilities support a mission statement that provides at
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.