Knoxville hospital employee marks 55 years of service

Barb Anderson, a Knoxville native, marked 55 years of service at what was Collins Hospital and is now Knoxville Hospital & Clinics. She began on Sept. 7, 1971, after job-shadowing at the Knoxville Veterans Hospital Laboratory while in high school. With help from guidance counselor Jim Bell and a lab program at Des Moines Area Community College, Anderson started as a lab assistant three days after graduating, later earning a medical technologist degree and becoming laboratory manager in the late 1980s. She moved to PRN status in 2018 and retired from full-time work in May 2018. During her career, blood testing shifted from manual microscope counts to robotic barcode computerized equipment and paper records to electronic charts.