For accreditation purposes, we are required to keep records of all the complaints we receive into the microbiology laboratory, but not the compliments…

Every so often, someone will give you, or the laboratory, a pat on the back for a piece of good work you have done. This compliment can of course be verbal, by email or by letter.

I would advise you to store the compliments for a rainy/stormy day…

Not only does it balance out the complaints, but I think it is actually very important.

If you are innovating, making changes, and pushing the boundaries of the laboratory practice of microbiology, you can be sure someone will have a real go at you at some point in time. It is completely inevitable. That is when it is nice to have a ‘compliment box’, to objectively demonstrate that not everyone has the same opinion of you/your laboratory as your complainant.

So sitting beside my “Complaints” folder in Microsoft Outlook, I also have a “Compliments” folder, ready to be dug into whenever it is required. Admittedly my Compliments folder is not as big as my Complaints folder! Actually I don’t mind this at all. If the compliments I received were more numerous than the complaints, I would be worried that I was not being innovative enough and simply concerned with trying to keep everybody happy…

Michael