Description
December 10, 2025
Advancing Laboratory Excellence: An interview with the CAP’s Joel Todd Moncur, MD, PhD, MS, FCAP
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
- Elizabeth McMahon
Coming up, a must-read digest on your CAP membership in 2025. Get the highlights. And holiday book recommendations for the picky pathologist on your gift list. Welcome to the Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. It's Wednesday, December 10th, and here are the headlines. Your mailbox may be filling up with holiday greeting cards. But one special delivery you won't want to miss, the premier issue of the CAP Member Digest. This seven-page print edition is a handy guide to the tools and benefits that come with your membership. The Digest is filled with QR codes, which you can scan for more information. Review the highlights of this year and get a jumpstart on planning for 2026 events. As CAP President Dr. Jim Zhai says in his year-end message, quote, together. we can connect our members across generations and practicing settings. The Member Digest arrives in mailboxes this month. Meanwhile, it's an ideal time to finalize your laboratory's plans and orders for proficiency testing and external quality assessments. The CAP has 21 new PT and EQA offerings. If you need a quick overview, a new Q&A in the Medical Laboratory Observer with CAP Scientific Affairs Council Chair Dr. Joel Moncur will help. For example, he notes the CAP's program for dengue virus serology is the first offered by a U.S. provider. It allows laboratories to compare their results with peers using a range of assay platforms. And the CAP's HIV-1, HIV-2 molecular detection and differentiation program is the first one to be accessible globally. Read the interview by selecting the link in our show notes. Climate change wasn't a worry when the Black Death swept Europe in the 14th century, but a new study in the journal Communications Earth and Environment argues that cool weather brought the pathogen Yersinia pestis to Italy's shores in 1347. Plumes of sulfur from volcanic eruptions gradually cooled parts of Europe. The cold weather caused harvests to fail, forcing Italian cities to import grain along with plague-infected fleas. in the cargo holds. Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe and the University of Cambridge conducted the study. They used weather, climate, ecology, and historical data to understand how and why the pandemic was so deadly. And finally, tis the season for gift-giving, and the CAP has you covered. Need the perfect book for the pathologist or pathology lover on your list? Look no further than the CAP e-store, where there are must-reads for every taste. I spoke with CAP Publications Committee Chair, Dr. Dorothy Adcock, about her top recommendations this holiday season. Okay, Dr. Adcock, let's start with picture books. What's the perfect choice for someone who's really into imagery?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
Our newest publication that has a lot of fabulous photos is the second edition of The Color Atlas of Body Fluids, and this is by Dr. Eric Glassie. It's a fantastic book.
- Elizabeth McMahon
What about a great reference guide for pathologists on the go?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
Some of our most popular books with great photos are the benchtop reference guides. And we have a number of new additions coming out and even brand new benchtop reference guides. For instance, we have one on semen analysis, another on ANA staining patterns, and then susceptibility testing. And these will be out in the next year or so.
- Elizabeth McMahon
I hear you have a book hitting the shelves soon. Can you tell me about Essentials in Clinical Chemistry, a Concise Overview of Common Analytes?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
This first book provides information covering the 20 most commonly ordered clinical chemistry tests. It provides information about what causes analyte concentration elevation or decrease in concentration, various interferences, how to interpret the results of the test. And all of this information, as I mentioned, is succinct and bulleted. We hope that if this book provides useful information, that we'll have others follow it on various topics like endocrinological tests in clinical chemistry or metabolic diseases. So more to come on that. And then also, I have been involved in a phlebotomy text for decades. We will soon release the 16th edition. And our book is titled, So You're Going to Collect a Blood Specimen. Kind of a funny name for a title, but it's what the title has been for all these years. And it's a very practical instruction manual that is widely used in clinical settings.
- Elizabeth McMahon
Okay, finally, browsing outside the CAP, do you have a good fiction or nonfiction pathology related book you recommend?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
I read the most interesting book last summer called 18 Tiny Deaths, The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics. This book was authored by Bruce Goldfarb and published in 2020. It's about Frances Lee, who created something she called Nutshell Studies of unexplained death. And these were miniature dioramas of crime scenes. Actually, they were exquisitely detailed dioramas. And she used these to train both police and medical examiners in forensic observation. She is also known for establishing the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University in the 1930s. So really, Frances Lee helped develop the field of Modern Forensic Pathology, and it's detailed in this book, 18 Tiny Deaths. I highly recommend it. It's very interesting.
- Elizabeth McMahon
You can get links to these publications in the show notes. That wraps up today's Daily Edition. You can find more details on all these stories in our show notes. Don't miss our advocacy newsletter on Tuesdays and our weekly edition newsletter on Thursdays. We'll be back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern. You can subscribe to this show on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. Have a great day.
Description
December 10, 2025
Advancing Laboratory Excellence: An interview with the CAP’s Joel Todd Moncur, MD, PhD, MS, FCAP
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
- Elizabeth McMahon
Coming up, a must-read digest on your CAP membership in 2025. Get the highlights. And holiday book recommendations for the picky pathologist on your gift list. Welcome to the Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. It's Wednesday, December 10th, and here are the headlines. Your mailbox may be filling up with holiday greeting cards. But one special delivery you won't want to miss, the premier issue of the CAP Member Digest. This seven-page print edition is a handy guide to the tools and benefits that come with your membership. The Digest is filled with QR codes, which you can scan for more information. Review the highlights of this year and get a jumpstart on planning for 2026 events. As CAP President Dr. Jim Zhai says in his year-end message, quote, together. we can connect our members across generations and practicing settings. The Member Digest arrives in mailboxes this month. Meanwhile, it's an ideal time to finalize your laboratory's plans and orders for proficiency testing and external quality assessments. The CAP has 21 new PT and EQA offerings. If you need a quick overview, a new Q&A in the Medical Laboratory Observer with CAP Scientific Affairs Council Chair Dr. Joel Moncur will help. For example, he notes the CAP's program for dengue virus serology is the first offered by a U.S. provider. It allows laboratories to compare their results with peers using a range of assay platforms. And the CAP's HIV-1, HIV-2 molecular detection and differentiation program is the first one to be accessible globally. Read the interview by selecting the link in our show notes. Climate change wasn't a worry when the Black Death swept Europe in the 14th century, but a new study in the journal Communications Earth and Environment argues that cool weather brought the pathogen Yersinia pestis to Italy's shores in 1347. Plumes of sulfur from volcanic eruptions gradually cooled parts of Europe. The cold weather caused harvests to fail, forcing Italian cities to import grain along with plague-infected fleas. in the cargo holds. Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe and the University of Cambridge conducted the study. They used weather, climate, ecology, and historical data to understand how and why the pandemic was so deadly. And finally, tis the season for gift-giving, and the CAP has you covered. Need the perfect book for the pathologist or pathology lover on your list? Look no further than the CAP e-store, where there are must-reads for every taste. I spoke with CAP Publications Committee Chair, Dr. Dorothy Adcock, about her top recommendations this holiday season. Okay, Dr. Adcock, let's start with picture books. What's the perfect choice for someone who's really into imagery?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
Our newest publication that has a lot of fabulous photos is the second edition of The Color Atlas of Body Fluids, and this is by Dr. Eric Glassie. It's a fantastic book.
- Elizabeth McMahon
What about a great reference guide for pathologists on the go?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
Some of our most popular books with great photos are the benchtop reference guides. And we have a number of new additions coming out and even brand new benchtop reference guides. For instance, we have one on semen analysis, another on ANA staining patterns, and then susceptibility testing. And these will be out in the next year or so.
- Elizabeth McMahon
I hear you have a book hitting the shelves soon. Can you tell me about Essentials in Clinical Chemistry, a Concise Overview of Common Analytes?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
This first book provides information covering the 20 most commonly ordered clinical chemistry tests. It provides information about what causes analyte concentration elevation or decrease in concentration, various interferences, how to interpret the results of the test. And all of this information, as I mentioned, is succinct and bulleted. We hope that if this book provides useful information, that we'll have others follow it on various topics like endocrinological tests in clinical chemistry or metabolic diseases. So more to come on that. And then also, I have been involved in a phlebotomy text for decades. We will soon release the 16th edition. And our book is titled, So You're Going to Collect a Blood Specimen. Kind of a funny name for a title, but it's what the title has been for all these years. And it's a very practical instruction manual that is widely used in clinical settings.
- Elizabeth McMahon
Okay, finally, browsing outside the CAP, do you have a good fiction or nonfiction pathology related book you recommend?
- Dr. Dorothy Adcock
I read the most interesting book last summer called 18 Tiny Deaths, The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics. This book was authored by Bruce Goldfarb and published in 2020. It's about Frances Lee, who created something she called Nutshell Studies of unexplained death. And these were miniature dioramas of crime scenes. Actually, they were exquisitely detailed dioramas. And she used these to train both police and medical examiners in forensic observation. She is also known for establishing the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University in the 1930s. So really, Frances Lee helped develop the field of Modern Forensic Pathology, and it's detailed in this book, 18 Tiny Deaths. I highly recommend it. It's very interesting.
- Elizabeth McMahon
You can get links to these publications in the show notes. That wraps up today's Daily Edition. You can find more details on all these stories in our show notes. Don't miss our advocacy newsletter on Tuesdays and our weekly edition newsletter on Thursdays. We'll be back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern. You can subscribe to this show on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. Have a great day.
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