Maria Parham Honors Its Laboratory

5/23/2011

Part of focus gives back to the community 

Maria Parham Medical Center recently celebrated and recognized their medical laboratory professionals during National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week.  This week celebrates the dedicated individuals who are often behind-the-scenes members of a laboratory team with one goal in mind—improved patient care and outcomes. 

“I salute Maria Parham Medical Center’s outstanding laboratory team working together to provide accurate results for patients. They are an integral part of the larger patient care team and directly contribute to preserving and enhancing the life of the patient. Life is better for our patients and community because of their dedication in the medical technology field. They are the lifeblood of accurate diagnoses,” said Tammy Care, Administrative Laboratory Director of Maria Parham. 

The role that laboratory professionals play in communities is both very broad in scope and extremely important. Today, more than 70 percent of all decisions about diagnosis, treatment, hospital admission and discharge rest on work done in medical laboratories.  The result of their work is improved patient outcomes, wellness, and advances in personalized medicine.  Using state-of-the-art technology and instrumentation, laboratory professionals perform and supervise tests that not only search for potential health problems in the hope of identifying diseases early when they are most treatable, but also guide and assess the ongoing care of patients.  From small practices in rural towns to big city hospitals, nearly 300,000 medical laboratory professionals and more than 17,000 board-certified pathologists deliver accurate test results every day. 

Many things took place to help celebrate the week at Maria Parham.  Laboratory staff members were offered Continuing Education opportunities, a family cookout was held, and the staff organized and carried out a hospital-wide food drive to benefits ACTS, here in Henderson.  This was in an effort to thank the community for their 85 years of support to the hospital.  The food drive was very successful and led to many canned goods and non-perishable items being gathered and delivered to Melvin Green, Executive Director of ACTS.