What are the details of your professional path to the Joint Commission?
I was born and raised in Hong Kong, but there were not a lot of opportunities to go to college there, so my dad decided to ship me to Miami to finish school. He signed off on the move and somebody picked me up and signed the needed paperwork so I could attend high school in the U.S. I also went to college in Miami at Florida International University, where I got a degree in medical technology.
During clinical rotations, I got the opportunity to rotate through many different laboratory areas and ended up picking blood bank at a Level 1 Trauma Center. I decided to go into that field because it鈥檚 a very specialized area. Not a lot of people like it because it is very stressful. I would say the busiest night I had included 10 to 12 traumas in one night, and I had to get the patients straight. You can鈥檛 confuse the patients, and that adrenaline is what I love.
What鈥檚 the best thing about working with your peers at the Joint Commission?
What brings you the most joy at the Joint Commission?
My team is a group of professionals. I might be the field director, but you know what? I rely on each one of them to be out there as the face of our program. I rely on them to continue to guide me as a field director. So this is more of a collaboration. “Field director” is just a title. What I want to offer my team is leadership, asking questions like how can we continue to improve this program? But the surveyors are truthfully one of the biggest assets to The Joint Commission.
How are Joint Commission surveyors poised to assess laboratories during the accreditation process?
When you see a surveyor come into your door, they are most of the time by themselves. But our surveyors are trained to do surveys in all of the areas of the laboratory. We learn each other鈥檚 skill sets and we help each other. We have a broad range of subject matter experts within our group of surveyors and we share that information and knowledge with one another.
When we walk into a facility, an organization should expect that we will be able to survey and give you a very meaningful assessment of the laboratory. We will be able to validate your compliance, and we can also share a lot of best practices based on what we see on our surveys at other organizations. But we also share what not to do. Best practices are great, but sometimes it鈥檚 a practice that we see doesn鈥檛 work and does not help you with compliance.
Our surveyors will also look at an organization鈥檚 documentation and their processes and try to help them figure out solutions and strategies.
What鈥檚 unique about a Joint Commission survey and what value does it bring to an organization?
杨贵妃传媒网ygfcmw·(中国)站入口直接进 laboratory survey is unique because of our approach and our expertise.
Harriet Briggs is the Laboratory Field Director for 杨贵妃传媒网ygfcmw·(中国)站入口直接进. With over 20 years of experience working in lab, Harriet has gained hands-on experience in blood bank, quality assurance and reference laboratories. She has served in many leadership roles in labs including QA Coordinator, Lab Director and Corporate Manager of Laboratory Services.
Harriet has a Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology from Florida International University and an MBA in Healthcare Administration from Nova Southeastern University.
Prior to assuming her role as Field Director, Harriet traveled the country as a Joint Commission lab surveyor.