About Critical Values

While pumping gas in her scrubs one summer, a woman approached Kimberly Fiock, PhD, QBSR^CM, with a curious look, wanting to know if Dr. Fiock had just gotten off work at a hospital. When she explained that she was researching neurodegenerative diseases during her internship at a brain bank, the woman burst into tears and embraced Dr. Fiock; her father suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s. In that moment, her personal history with disease, love of neuropathology, and her future all intertwined. That encounter, and the countless other moments of sheer awe Dr. Fiock felt that summer— seeing her first autopsy, holding a human brain for the first time, and visualizing cells under the microscope that she had stained— led her to pursue her graduate degrees in pathology. Although that summer was nearly a decade ago, Dr. Fiock still feels the same sense of awe when she thinks about the field today and feels lucky to be in a position to inspire others the way she was inspired all those years ago. 

Here, Dr. Fiock, founder and director of the Iowa Neuropathology Resource Laboratory (INRL) and the technical director of the Histology Research Laboratory at the same institution, shares more about her career journey.  

What aspects of laboratory medicine do you find most intriguing and fulfilling? How do these align with your personal and professional interests?  

My favorite part of the lab is histology, especially immunostaining. It’s exciting to see how samples look under the microscope and how that contributes to the ultimate diagnosis. I also love that it’s an art as much as a science. Getting antibodies to work correctly for the best results requires a lot of finesse, and it’s very satisfying to see your hard work pay off with a successful diagnosis. Immunostaining is also a huge component of research histology, which allows us to make new discoveries and take some beautiful pictures! 

What impact do you hope to make through your work in this field?

I want to empower patients to understand what happens to their samples in the lab. Waiting for a diagnosis is scary and helping demystify the process can provide patients with some relief while they wait for answers. I also hope to encourage more professionals to get involved in outreach and education. Our field is full of talented, knowledgeable experts who have so much experience to share to excite the next generation of laboratory professionals! I’d love to see more people finding ways to share their career journey through social media, especially because that’s the best way to connect with the next generation we hope to recruit to the field. 

What advice would you give to someone considering a career in the laboratory?  

One of the best things about laboratory medicine is that there are so many different areas of the lab and so many different career levels. There really is something to interest and excite everyone! If you’re interested in the lab, I would suggest looking into each area to see the workload and what different career paths there are. I would especially encourage people to look into more non-traditional histology labs like research core facilities, where they can apply the same grossing and histology skills to various research specimens. I would also recommend looking into ASCP certifications early in your educational journey to ensure you qualify for one of the many routes available and to give yourself plenty of time to study. One of the best things about the ASCP certifications and qualifications is that you can pursue them throughout your career to help expand your skillset or transition into other areas of the lab. 

I find it surprising how few people know about what we do. Pathology and laboratory medicine is so integral to not only the patient experience but to research efforts as well, so it’s always exciting when I get to educate people about what happens to their samples when they go to the doctor or when we discover something new in science. I’m especially surprised when other healthcare professionals aren’t aware of the steps that it takes to make a diagnosis or run a test they’ve ordered. I think it is important that we, as laboratory professionals, work as a team with other areas of patient care to explain how our processes work, so there’s clear communication and expectations for how long something takes. This same thing applies to the research side when working with collaborators with less histology experience and may not understand all the steps involved in making an experiment happen.