Editorial

Extract

Recently, there was a full page petition in a local newspaper that spoke to the destruction of a garden space on the grounds of a hospital. Apparently the hospital administration had decided to destroy the garden in order to construct a new building. The bottom of the page had a list of over 145 signatures of people who were in opposition to this decision. The list included people who self identified themselves as full time physicians who headed major departments such as Pediatrics and Endocrinology, nurses, physician assistants, psychologists, nurse practitioners, social workers, librarians, health and life educators, and dieticians. Nowhere on the list was anyone who self identified themselves as medical laboratory scientists or technicians.

This leads one to wonder why. Perhaps no one from laboratory from medical director to phlebotomist knew there was a garden, never mind that it was going to be destroyed. Or perhaps everyone in the laboratory didn't like the garden in the first place. Or perhaps they just didn't know of fast changing news at their hospital.

Some time ago, a webpage was started to encourage support for the garden. Currently there are over 12,000 supporters and these include many patient families. The initial news concerning the status of the garden first started showing up on the webpage over three years ago. There have been at least six stories found in the local newspaper and the former mayor supported the need to keep the garden. This must have been mentioned in hospital newsletters, administratively…