2007 Award for Outstanding Clinical Laboratory Contributions to Patient Safety
Ms. Berte is the president of Laboratories Made Better! P.C., a company based in Broomfield, Colo., that provides consulting services for health-care quality management. For the past decade she has provided laboratory clients and professional organizations in Europe, Asia, and North, Central, and South America with training in quality management systems, assistance in quality management implementation, development and control of laboratory documents, and development of training and competence assessment programs. She has 15 years experience as an American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) inspector. She was a charter member of the AABB committee that developed the “Quality System Essentials” that have become the backbone of the AABB’s standards and accreditation programs. She served as workshop faculty and audioconference speaker for numerous continuing education programs and is a member of the AABB Quality Management Subcommittee of the Standards Committee. She serves on the CLMA Patient Safety and Quality Committee, which recently developed the “Good Laboratory Practices” website, where laboratories can contribute and obtain ideas for improving patient safety. Ms. Berte chaired and participated in several subcommittees and work groups of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute, with particular attention to guidelines for implementing a laboratory quality management system. She was a charter faculty member of the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s (ASCP) teleconference program in the early 1980s, and achieved high scores as a faculty member of ASCP’s Workshops for Laboratory Professionals. She continues to contribute articles, chapters, and books about quality management and patient safety.