[Histonet] Workshop

[Lee & Peggy Wenk]

Would like some input from Histonetters, sent directly to my home email, not
through Histonet. Lpwenk <@t> sbcglobal.net

I'm giving a workshop at NSH this year on cultural and religious
considerations in the laboratory, along with a minister who is in charge of
our hospital's pastoral care education. He gave a 30 minute talk at our
state meeting a few years ago, and everyone thought he and the information
was great. Once or twice, he's talked to our MT and HT/HTL students about
this topic, and we're including him again this year in our student's
management talks. NSH has accepted this as a 3 hour workshop.

We've been putting together information about different religons and
cultures, in relation to laboratories (blood transfusions, transplants,
autopsies, genetics, fetuses, placentas, burial, etc.). We're going to
concentrate on what we as laboratorians can do to respect others' beliefs
and traditions.

If you have an example of some religious or cultural consideration that you
or your lab have done in the past, and how you handled it, would you mind
passing it along to my home email?

Michigan has a lot of people from all over the world, and our hospital and
lab have tried to become aware of the needs of our patients and their
families in terms of religious and cultural wishes. But Michigan may not
have a high enough population for our hospital/lab to have experience with
all cultures, nationalities, religions, etc. For example, I should imagine
the US states on the west coast have more experience with people from the
Polynesian Islands than we do. ANative American traditions differ by
location. And I'd love histonetters from other countries to chime in also. 

We know we can't cover every single religion or nationality, and we can't
cover the spectrum of differences within each religion and culture. But
we're going to cover the main considerations, and how the laboratories can
accommodate our patients.

We're going to cover the typical Anatomic Pathology labs (histology,
autopsy) but will also cover some Clinical Pathology labs (phlebotomy, blood
transfusions, genetics, etc.), so that participants can take the document
back to their place of employment, and start a dialog with all the labs.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Peggy Wenk
Lpwenk <@t> sbcglobal.net