This month, I would like to spotlight our monthly Staff Recognition Program. We thank these amazing individuals for their hard work, for their dedication to our patients, our clinicians, our students/trainees, our faculty and to their team, for the outstanding quality of their work and for their consistently helpful and positive outlook.

We are fortunate to have so many dedicated staff members and such wonderful teams, all focused on our vision, which is, “We are committed to healing humankind, one patient at a time, by delivering outstanding clinical laboratory services, advancing research, educating the next generation, doing what’s right, making things better and being kind.”

Below, I’m delighted to spotlight a few of the many ways members of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine are giving back to our communities and I’m happy to recognize our employees of the month for the past year.

2022 DGSOM Employees of the Month

2022	Employee of the Month	Section
January	Patrick Silvestre	UIC
February	Barry Ayala	Pathology Facilities
March	Lenny Pazhavila	Outreach Lab
April	Peter Phan	UIC
May	George Venegas	Olympic Lab
June	Ling Wang	Pathology Administrative Services
July	Nico Aldana	Clinical Finance
August	Ko Kiehle	Translational Pathology Core Lab
September	Rufino (RJ) Juta	Pathology Research Portal
October	Victor Gradilla	Outreach Client Services
November	Kristine Fisher	Human Resources
December	Kimberly Decastro	Olympic Lab

 

 

2022	Employee of the Month	Section
January	Chuong Vu	Cytology
February	Denia Marquez-Martinez	Cytogenetics
March	The Cytologist Team
April	Nancy Gomez	Histology
May	Arminda Mestre	Cytogenetics
June	Antonina (Nina) Morofugi	Flow Cytometry & Bone Marrow Labs
July	Christopher Curtin	Histology
August	Jian (Jamie) Zhou	Molecular Diagnostics Lab
September	Gertrude Goldsztajn	Cytogenetics
October	Nick Sabetta	Immunohistochemistry Lab
November	Frank Villalpando	Flow Cytometry & Bone Marrow Labs
December	Malaya (Maya) Garcia	Cytogenetics

2022 LM Employees of the Month

2022	Employee of the Month	Section
January	Patrick Ravelo	Clinical Laboratory, Santa Monica
February	Milad Abdelshahid	Support Services, Ronald Reagan
March	Susana Kim	BURL Outreach Clinical Laboratory
April	Paul Molfese	Blood & Platelet Center/Component Processing Lab
May	Janet Baez	Transfusion Medicine
June	Alexis Pammit	Core Laboratory
July	Delia Tejano	Blood & Platelet Center/Component Processing Lab
August	Leticia Silva	BURL Woodland Hills
September	Nicole Tan	Microbiology Lab
October	Sarah Lee	Outpatient Phlebotomy Department
November	Thomas Cassidy	Core Lab
December	Alison Boyle	Virology

CORE LAB

In early 2022, Ronald Reagan Point of Care team, led by Lavita Boyd, and QA Sr. Specialists Lilian Baldwin and Khanh Andrews, sprang into action on the first day back from the holidays and set up COVID antigen testing in the 100 Medical Plaza building by January 4th. Nurses from Hospital Quality were trained to perform testing, and job aids and supplies were provided by RR Lab team. Over 600 staff were screened by the time testing wrapped up a month later.

CARE HARBOR CLINIC

• On March 4-6, The Care Harbor Free Health Clinic hosted their annual health fair that provides free medical, dental and vision care to thousands of uninsured and underinsured people in our communities. For those who live without access to the care they need, this is a destination for help and hope. I am proud to share our department played a key role in the success of this event, as we have since 2011.
• Under the direction of Lavita Boyd, our team analyzed results for tests orders, including Wet mounts, Hemoglobin, Urine pregnancy, and Urine Dipstick. I would like to spotlight all our department volunteers: Lavita Boyd, Vladimyria C. Aquino, Candie Bautista, Ofelia Cartagena, Claire Ladan, Anna Marie Ramos, JooHee Sohn, Sonia Valadez, Emylee Villasin, and Charlene Yu.
• This event is an important way that we give back to our community and I am so grateful to our volunteers for their time and dedication to ensure the lab testing proceeded smoothly.
• Please see our event flyer for additional information and pictures of our team in action! To view the video from the UCLA Newsroom, please visit here.

 

For the 13th consecutive year, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine fielded a team for the American Heart & Stroke Association's Heart Walk, which took place on Saturday, October 22, 2022 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Led by Nathan Okawa, our team placed third out of 51 UCLA teams, surpassing our fundraising goal and raising $6260. UCLA Health also surpassed their goal and raised over $80,000, the most of all participating hospitals.

BLOOD & PLATELET CENTER (BPC)

• International WeLoveU Foundation Blood Drive with UCLA Blood & Platelet Center (BPC) In 2022, the BPC, WSS, WeLoveU Foundation, the Dodgers, and two blood donor centers partnered for a community blood drive at the Dodger Stadium. With a combined total of 583 donors, an unprecedented 469 Whole Blood units were collected. This number is even more impressive given the nationwide blood inventory shortage being experienced at the time. Such massive collection not only fulfilled our hospital patient transfusion needs, it enabled us to share blood products to other UC Medical Centers and neighboring hospitals.
• Resumed high school blood drives on-site while adhering to COVID guidelines.
• Resumed the Turner Internship Program during Summer 2022.
• BPC was selected as a capstone project by the Anderson School of Management, Applied Management Research Program. The AMR team will provide strategic feedback for the BPC in an effort to maximize our operations and develop a model for other hospital-based donor centers.

BRENTWOOD

• Continue C. auris testing, providing support to long term care facilities and the community.
• Surpassed over 660,000 COVID PCR tests performed since the beginning of the pandemic.
• Several UCLA staff who work in Brentwood are board members of SCASM (Southern California Branch of the American Society for Microbiology), see below.