Welcome to Sara Patterson Professional Website

Economics has entered the healthcare arena. Pathologists have a professional responsibility to advise clinicians of which tests for patients are necessary and which are not through appropriate test utilization. The American Society for Clinical Pathology as joined the Choosing Wisely campaign with several major national organizations to help healthcare practitioners, patients, and other stakeholders develop sustainable solutions to stop the overuse or misuse of medical tests and procedures that provide little or no benefit. Sara S. Patterson wrote the profile about Roger L. Bertholf, PhD, who is a clinical scientist devoted to solving the puzzles of diseases. Dr. Bertholf is the new Editor-in-Chief of LabMedicine, ASCP’s journal for medical laboratory professionals. As the Managing Editor, she edited all the articles and wrote the stories for ASCP News.

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Critical Values, April 2012 Issue

As Managing Editor of Critical Values, Sara S. Patterson edited the articles in this fascinating issue about how pathologists and laboratory professionals have to accelerate their adaptation to change to take advantage of the evolving healthcare environment. Jobs are plentiful in the medical laboratory profession, but students and those considering a second career have to learn about them. Dynamic changes in pathology residency training are transforming the future of the pathology profession.

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Critical Values, January 2012 Issue

For four years, I have cut down the 14 geramium plants on both sides of the steps of our home in the fall, covered them, and then waited until late February. That’s when I uncover them in their stations at the windows of our basement and begin watering them in hopes they will come back to life for the spring, summer, and fall.

The first year, eight of the 14 red geramiums came back to life. I felt a sense of accomplishment, not to mention several dollars ahead when the cost to buy annuals came around.

The next year, nine geramiums came back to life. Last year, 10 geramiums poked up the brown stems. And this February, a miraculous 13 of the 14 came back. I felt like cheering those resilient plants. Although it’s still a mystery to me why some plants come back from the brink of death and others don’t.

But I do know that I cannot wait until the weather is warm enough to move those 13 geramiums from my back porch (They have graduated from the basement windows at this point in their evolution.) to the front steps. Of course, I have to purchase one red geramium to join the regenerated ones. That’s a small price to pay.

Recently, I stayed at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis while I was attending a conference. Twenty years ago, I had been there for a blues night that my boss and I hosted for participants at a big telecommunications conference. At that time, the main rooms of the Columbia Club were lovely, but the guest rooms were a bit dated. I remember some of our salespeople complained about the showers and towels.

Fortunately, during the intervening years, the Columbia Club has installed new showers and other amenities that have kept the charm intact but moved the guest rooms up a notch. The lovely woodwork and early 20th-century furniture in public spaces looks spruced up without the cookie-cutter look of generic conference centers.

But as I saw many older members in the dining rooms, I wondered how the Columbia Club would survive for future generations. By the end of my stay, I knew how it had adapted and would thrive for the foreseeable future.

• Great employees at the front desk and in the dining rooms remember members’ and guests’ names and food preferences. For example, at breakfast after the first morning, my server remembered that I wanted hot tea and brought it immediately. At dinner, servers spoke to the members like they were friends but were scrupulous about catering to their every whim.
• Constant stream of events are held at the Columbia Club from singers to concerts to Easter Egg hunts. One evening, I returned to hear a wonderful piano concert in the lobby and atrium. A woman told me the concert for a local arts club. Clearly, the Columbia Club is part of the local community.

As I worked in my garden this weekend, I considered the similarities between editing and gardening. When I edit copy, I have to take out the words that clutter the copy, change words that are not the right ones, and create the best presentation for the story.

 When I was gardening on Sunday, I had to pull out the weeds that destroy the space and roots of the flowers and herbs, pull out plant species such as lilies and spearmint when they invade the space of other plants, and trim off the dead flowers or branches to restore more beauty and symmetry, not to mention health, to the flowers and rose bushes. I have to know when to trim and weed, and at what point to leave the garden alone, just like editing copy.

The beauty of a well-tended, well designed garden is like the loveliness of a good story. And like a good story, a garden can always be better and a thousand possibilities. It can be refined and remade, but if the structure is good, the result will keep improving.

Since I was a child, Christmas has meant putting up a real tree. A Christmas tree’s smell transforms the house. I like to fun my fingers through the needles and feel the sap and rough bark when I hold the tree while my husband tightens the screws.

Unpacking and hanging the ornaments takes me back in time to when a good friend or relative gave me a particular ornament. Or when my husband and I picked out ornaments together. And then there are my Woolworth’s painted wooden ornaments that I bought when I had very little money. I saved those ornaments to remind me of harder times, although I no longer tie crayons on the branches with bright red bows or drape garlands of hand strung cranberries on the branches. Now I have more ornaments than I can hang on a six- or seven-foot tree.

The lights and the lighted angel on top are what turns each year’s Christmas tree into a magical symbol of the holiday. So when we packed up the ornaments and pulled down the lights and angel yesterday, I was sad that Christmas has ended. The magic for this year is over.

But the today I did something I have not done before. I sawed off the balsam tree’s branches and spread them throughout my garden in our backyard. Now a tree will nourish the garden for the spring. Except for the trunk, the tree was not wasted. Somehow that makes the magic of Christmas last several months longer.

Raymond Chandler turned pulp fiction into art with his novels about murders and gumshoe Philip Marlowe. His writing was descriptive, graceful, and, at moments, even sublime. His best novels captured a world where murders took place, but the people he created were believable. Sometimes Chandler’s plots were a little contrived, but his characters made it easy to overlook the flaws. Philip Marlowe made Los Angelos a real place apart from its movie star mystique.

A new year has promise written all over it. While it’s not a blank slate,the new year offers the chance for change. So what do I want to change about what I do and who I am?

1. Be healthier and stronger, which means more exercise, including strength training (not my favorite) and more consistently eating healthy food.

2. Write more outside of my job, which means fewer distractions like movies from Netflix in the evenings and on weekends.

3. Design a garden up at the cabin for the hill, which means studying garden design and native plant books in the winter months.

If I can stick to these three resolutions, that’s enough until I come up with more for 2013.

Sara S. Patterson wrote the profile of Mark H. Stoler, MD, FASCP, a cytopathologist who is dedicated to improving the human condition. For 30 years, Dr. Stoler has successfully sought to understand why cervical cancer occurs and how to improve its early detection, diagnosis, and treatment. His work stands out for his unflagging persistence to ongoing research in cervical cancer. Additionally, Sara wrote about American Society for Clinical Pathology members’ successful advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., and all the stories for ASCP News. She serves as the Managing Editor for news magazine.

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Critical Values, October 2011 Issue

Losing the characters in “All My Children” is like the death of longtime friends. These were the best kinds of friends: always there when you needed them but not demanding when you were absent.

Through the 41 years of “All My Children,” I was an intermittent, not a regular, watcher. My viewing started in high school because other kids watched the soap opera. To be accepted, I needed to know what was going on.

Initially, I was sort of horrified that high schoolers would be interested in a soap opera. My mother was allergic soap operas, and I had thought they were for lonely housewives. Yet I was surprised at how easy I became involved in the stories of the families of the mythic Pine Valley: Erica and her many husbands and lovers, her mother, and later her children; the cunning, manipulative Phoebe; the escapades of Tad; the romance of Nina and Cliff; and the nasty maneuvers of Adam, to name a few.

At the center of “All My Children,” Erica Kane was a late 20th-, early 21st-century version of Scarlett O’Hara. She was manipulative, selfish, and extraordinarily competitive, but Erica was also beautiful, sometimes generous, and occasionally kind. Despite everything, she was fun to watch and never boring.

The people around Erica were related by blood, many marriages, and rivalries. Brooke was the rational counterpart for Erica. She could stand up to her and come out a winner, at least sometimes.

The continuity in the many of the families made it easy to go away for many years, and then return and figure out what was going on easily. That’s what happened with me. After high school, I didn’t watch “All My Children” again until I was unemployed for a few months during the recession of 1991.

In 2006 and 2007, I returned again when I worked out at gym during lunch. If I could, I would switch one of three TVs to “All My Children,” which was much more entertaining than watching a sports program on ESPN. Because I love stories. And although some of the story lines were absurd, other stories were moving and dramatic. I could take my mind off my pain, and think about something else.

So I am very sad to see these wonderful characters leave the airwaves. Somehow, their stories made life at tough times a little more bearable, fun, and dramatic. And since “All My Children” had actors of all ages, the glimpse into other lives was more comprehensive than soap operas that only focus on the young and beautiful. I watched Erica, Tad, Brooke, and Dixie grow up and get older, although not always wiser.

I can only hope that “All My Children” gets picked up somewhere else, so viewers can find these friends when they need them.