The Need for Laboratory Medicine in the Undergraduate Medical Education Curriculum: A White Paper from the Association of Pathology Chairs.

Considering laboratory results are used to make medical decisions, a fundamental understanding of laboratory medicine is paramount to enhance patient care, optimize health care cost containment, and prevent legal repercussions. With increasing laboratory testing complexity, this education is needed now more than ever. This article is a call to action to have medical schools adequately incorporate practical laboratory medicine content into their undergraduate medical education (UME) curricula.

Impact of diagnostic management team on patient time to diagnosis and percent of accurate and clinically actionable diagnoses.

Objectives: Diagnostic management teams (DMT) are groups of experts with specialized knowledge to guide test selection and interpretation of results. They have been active in institutions over the past 20 years. To date, there are limited data on whether the presence of experts to advise healthcare providers on appropriate laboratory test selection and interpretation of complex test results positively impacts patient care.

DIAGNOSTIC ERROR IN THE UNITED STATES: A SUMMARY OF THE REPORT OF A NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE COMMITTEE.

This review article summarizes the conclusions of the National Academy of Medicine committee on diagnostic error. The committee deliberated during five in-person meetings and during numerous conference calls between April 2014 and April 2015. At three of the meetings, the committee invited multiple speakers to inform its deliberations.