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In her 11 years at BWH, Dimity Zepf never has had direct patient contact. Yet, her work as a technologist at the Center for Advanced Molecular Diagnostics Lab in the Shapiro Cardiovascular Center is crucial to physicians, nurses and others caring for patients everyday.
“I see myself as a small piece of this giant puzzle,” said Zepf, a clinical supervisor who leads five technologists in the lab. “And I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”
Zepf and her team work in molecular biology amplifying small amounts of DNA using a technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction. This technique is important to identifying and monitoring diseases, such as leukemia and lymphoma, and is performed on either a blood sample or a body tissue.
“You might think testing one specimen after another everyday would be boring,” Zepf said. “But it’s not. We know that there is a patient behind every sample, and many of them are waiting anxiously for the results.”
The Center for Advanced Molecular Diagnostics processes as many as 1,500 samples per month and performs other tests, including maternal screening for cystic fibrosis testing. The center, which was created earlier this year when the Cytogenetics and Molecular Diagnostic laboratories came together as one entity, has experienced growth because of the shift toward personalized medicine.
“In the last five years, we have encountered rapid growth,” said Nina Longtine, MD, chief of Molecular Diagnostics. “And Dimity has been at the front of it. She leads by example and is never too busy to help others.”
Zepf enjoys the variety of her day to day work. She might begin the day in her office making sure the administrative side of the lab runs smoothly and cap off her day wearing a lab coat and amplifying DNA samples.
“You really never know what you are going to be doing,” Zepf said. “Every day is a different challenge, and that’s something that makes me come back, day after day.”