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| 2 | 2009
Klinisk Biokemi i Norden
The second term of Secretary of
the IFCC is well on the way. I
expect this term to be a bit easier
than the first term, because now I
know the duties of the secretary.
It always takes a couple of years
to learn one’s duties on a new job.
What are the duties of the
Secretary of the IFCC? The main
task is to prepare the agenda for
each Executive Board meeting, together with the
IFCC President. I usually start preparing the agenda
of a meeting about six weeks before the actual mee-
ting. I will collect all the emails, documents and
reports, which I have received after the previous
meeting and include them in the agenda. I also send
requests to Division Chairs, Chairs of Task Forces and
the Presidents of Regional Federations for any reports
or items to be included in the agenda. The agenda is
usually about 30 pages long and because of the many
reports, publications, minutes and other documents
the appendices are often 200-300 pages. I send the
agenda to the Executive Board about two weeks prior
the meeting to allow the EB Members to read all the
material and prepare themselves for the meeting.
Executive Board has three meetings a year. During
the meeting the Secretary takes the notes for the
minutes of the meeting. This is the most difficult
task, because I am not very quick in typing. The notes
are usually a few words of a sentence, a few letters of
a word, but it is amazing how well I can remember
who said what based on these few notes. I usually
write the draft minutes within a couple of weeks
after the meeting, because the sooner you write the
minutes the better you remember the course of the
meeting. First I send the draft minutes to President
for comments and corrections. After revising the first
draft based on these I send the second draft of the
minutes to the whole Executive Board for comments
and corrections. They need another couple of weeks
IFCC NEWS
Päivi Laitinen
Paivi.H.Laitinen@ppshp.fi
for comments and after receiving them I will finalize
the minutes. I also write an Executive Summary of
the minutes, which is published on the IFCC website
after the finalization of the full minutes.
Every day I receive 30-40 IFCC emails, which need
to be responded to, archived in my files for future
need. It usually takes about two hours a day to deal
with these emails, which I do in the evenings after my
working hours in the laboratory.
The beginning of the year is usually the busiest
time for the Secretary, because the IFCC Annual
Report has to be compiled. To compile the annual
report the IFCC office sends the Secretary’s letter to
the President, the Treasurer, the Corporate Represen-
tative in EB, the Chair of the Awards Committee, the
National Societies, the Division Chairs and the Presi-
dents of the Regional Federations asking them all to
write their annual reports. The Secretary also writes
the Executive Board’s annual report. After I have all
the reports I edit them for a homogenous format, cor-
rect spelling errors and sometimes also edit the text.
Of these reports I also collect the highlights of the
past year. In the end I have two sets of annual reports,
one which is printed in LMI and the other one will be
put on the IFCC website. The latter report contains
the reports from all the National Societies and they
will be also available on the IFCC website. This year
we were lucky to receive annual reports from alto-
gether 46 National Societies, which means that more
than half of the membership sent their reports. This
is the record and hopefully reflects the more interac-
tive partnership between the International Federation
and the National Societies.
The IFCC Secretary is also in charge of the IFCC
office which is located in Milano. There three persons
working full time for the IFCC. Each of the three
ladies has their own tasks: one is working with Sci-
entific Division and finances, one with EB and EFCC
and the third one with EMD and CPD. Each of them
has also task forces and other projects, symposia and
