REECE HARMS

My name is Reece Harms, and I'm the Hematology Supervisor of Hendrick Medical Center's Main Campus. I consider working in healthcare to be one of my life's highest callings, and it's something I'm truly proud of. Growing up on a ranch, I learned a valuable lesson in the importance of being able to understand, maintain, and repair the equipment that allows you to perform your job well. I've always had a love of technology and mechanics: I built the computer that I'm typing this on myself, and my free time is spent in my shop as a mechanic, machinist, and a woodworker And while a John Deere tractor certainly isn't the same as a Compact Max, my ability to learn served me well once I began working in my first Clinical Laboratory. When I started at North Texas Community Hospital (a small 25 bed rural hospital to the West of the Metroplex) in 2010, I wanted to learn absolutely everything I could about our analyzers. Which, as it turns out, was perfect, because our service contracts were minimal and our location remote. Many hours of the first years of my life in the lab were spent with various hotlines troubleshooting over the phone. Service calls were very difficult to approve given NTCH's financial circumstances at the time, and if I couldn't fix an analyzer, we were down. I realized immediately that I needed to be able to resolve instrumentation issues reliably and, most importantly, quickly. I was very fortunate that the FSE's that were dispatched to us on occasion were more than happy to educate me about the instrumentation that they were servicing. This changed everything. Suddenly, a down analyzer wasn't something to fear. It was a challenge to overcome, and one that I knew how to. 14 years later, I'm so grateful for the FSE's that helped me long ago in the small town of Bridgeport, Texas. Thanks to them I learned a great deal, and that knowledge has grown into a love for working on analyzers. I've taken every opportunity that I had to receive advanced training, and I still shadow our FSE's every opportunity that I get. I know that I don't have experience as an engineer, but it is my hope that I can show Diagnostica Stago what I can do with laboratory experience, determination, and the help of the FSE's that showed me that a broken analyzer is nothing to be scared of, just a challenge that I can solve. Thank you for your consideration.