Clinical laboratory management review : official publication of the Clinical Laboratory Management Association / CLMA 

About: Clinical laboratory management review : official publication of the Clinical Laboratory Management Association / CLMA is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Health care & Managed care. It has an ISSN identifier of 0888-7950. Over the lifetime, 223 publications have been published receiving 1879 citations.

What makes a leader

Abstract: Superb leaders have very different ways of directing a team, a division, or a company. Some are subdued and analytical; others are charismatic and go with their gut. And different of situations call for different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitive negotiator at the helm whereas many turnarounds require a more forceful kind of authority. Psychologist and noted author Daniel Goleman has found, however, that effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. In fact, Goleman's research at nearly 200 large, global companies revealed that emotional intelligence--especially at the highest levels of a company--is the sine qua non for leadership. Without it, a person can have first-class training, an incisive mind, and an endless supply of good ideas, but he still won't make a great leader. The components of emotional intelligence--self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill--can sound unbusinesslike. But exhibiting emotional intelligence at the workplace does not mean simply controlling your anger or getting along with people. Rather it means understanding your own and other people's emotional makeup well enough to move people in the direction of accomplishing your company's goals. In this article, the author discusses each component of emotional intelligence and shows through examples how to recognize it in potential leaders, how and why it leads to measurable business results, and how it can be learned. It takes time and, most of all, commitment. But the benefits that come from having a well-developed emotional intelligence, both for the individual and the organization, make it worth the effort.

The hidden traps in decision making.

Abstract: Bad decisions can often be traced back to the way the decisions were made--the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. But sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human brain works can sabotage the choices we make. Eight psychological traps that are particularly likely to affect the way we make business decisions are examined. The anchoring trap leads us to give disproportionate weight to the first information we receive. The status-quo trap biases us toward maintaining the current situation--even when better alternatives exist. The sunk-cost trap inclines us to perpetuate the mistakes of the past. The confirming-evidence trap leads us to seek out information supporting an existing predilection and to discount opposing information. The framing trap occurs when we misstate a problem, undermining the entire decision-making process. The overconfidence trap makes us over-estimate the accuracy of our forecasts. The prudence trap leads us to be overcautious when we make estimates about uncertain events. And the recallability trap leads us to give undue weight to recent, dramatic events. The best way to avoid all the traps is awareness--forewarned is forearmed. The authors show how to take action to ensure that important business decisions are sound and reliable.

Nutrition assessment outcomes: a strategy to improve health care.

Abstract: Nutrition assessment performed as part of hospital admission protocol can significantly reduce length of stay, costs of care, and the incidence of readmission by efficiently identifying patients with malnutrition. As reported in more than 150 clinical studies, malnutrition is a health problem of huge magnitude, potentially affecting more than half of hospitalized patients in the United States. The laboratory director can optimize the use of visceral protein testing in nutrition assessment protocols to realize the greatest benefit for both patient and institution. The accurate identification of patients with protein calorie malnutrition allows the use of malnutrition ICD-9-CM codes to obtain higher reimbursement for the increased acuity of illness.