Lab Rat or Button Monkey?

I have been re-examining the content of the training site and realised I could add some extra RSS feeds to the front page.  I have added feeds from the Department of Health and the NHS. I hope these extra feeds prove to be a good resource.  If any one can suggest other suitable feeds, I am willing to add more.

I have been looking at my training site and updating a few things and in the process I have found several sources of podcasts!  The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has an audio podcast as well as some vidoes.

Also, I found the the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, the people behind the Clinical Chemistry journal, provide a  podcast.

I think its great that these heavy journals are providing this kind of content.  I have download a few episodes and will aim to listen whilst going to and from work next week.  Hope to provide some feedback soon.

I am currently working in a section with lots of HPLC equipment.  We have recently had the pleasure of several work experience people come and visit our lab and I was asked to show one of these people what I was doing.  I was in the middle of prepearing to do a batch of vitamins A & E for analysis. 

I explain what I was doing during the preperation, then I described the equipment I was about to use to perform the analysis, a HPLC system.  I pointed out the basic elements of the system, pump, column etc and I then pointed out the same elements in the other HPLC systems in the section, including the same elements in the tandem mass spec.

Thinking about this experience reminded me about a picture I had prepared for training purposes of a HPLC system with labels pointing out the various elements.  I thought this image would be useful for other people to use for training purposes also.  I have included a labelled and unlabelled version for people to download and use.

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I went to Focus recently.  I went for the Point of Care gathering.  The talks did include some really good talks and some not so good.  In terms of the whole, it was good.

The exhibition as a whole was less impressive than I expected.  I did hear noises about the scale of the exhibition being scaled back at Focus this year because companies are focusing (excuse the pun) on IBMS Congress.

For an individual, I think get togethers like this can be really usefull.  You need to work out what you want from the conference and see what day matches your needs.

I have joined the Association of Clinical Biochemistry.  Personally, I find the ACB a more appealing organisation than the IBMS as it is ed on the same subject area as my chosen discipline though it is aimed at a slightly different professional group.  Access to the Annals is good as the Annals is more widely referenced than the British Journal of Biomedical Science.

I hope to update you on how my membership is going.

The NHS IT project for computerised records has hit yet more problems.  It seems that any IT project  will have problems but this project has been hit more than most.  Only the air traffic control centre at Swanwick seems to be worse

These are the POCT guidelines from the IBMS

The Royal College of Pathologists have a document about Point of Care Testing.

This document is from 12 Oct 2004

There is a dedicated Point of Care meeting within the ACB Focus meeting at Liverpool in May 2009.  Details can be found here.

It seems that fist clenching can increase potassium levels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7525932.stm