| #3. Oct 15, 2026 | Drug Screen for Pre-Employment |
| Speaker: | Nguyen Nguyen, PhD, DABCC, is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Baylor College of Medicine and Director of Chemistry and Toxicology at Baylor Scott & White Health in Temple, Texas. He is board certified by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry and has extensive experience in clinical chemistry, toxicology, mass spectrometry, laboratory operations, and assay development. Dr. Nguyen leads clinical laboratory programs involving LC-MS/MS testing, therapeutic drug monitoring, toxicology, method development and validation, quality management, and regulatory compliance. His work has focused on expanding the use of mass spectrometry in routine clinical practice, including drug testing, endocrine testing, measured glomerular filtration rate, and antimicrobial therapeutic drug monitoring. He also serves as Program Director for the ComACC-accredited Clinical Chemistry Fellowship Program at Baylor Scott & White Health, where he is involved in graduate medical education and training future clinical chemists. His academic and professional interests include improving analytical performance, developing practical laboratory workflows, and evaluating how emerging technologies can improve diagnostic testing and patient care. Dr. Nguyen received his PhD in Chemistry and completed formal fellowship training in clinical chemistry. |
| Overview: | Pre-employment drug testing is widely used, yet conventional workflows continue to rely heavily on immunoassay screening followed by confirmatory mass spectrometry. This roundtable reviews the strengths and limitations of that approach and examines whether direct LC-MS/MS can provide a more effective alternative when mass spectrometry infrastructure and expertise already exist. Using Baylor Scott & White Health’s experience implementing a 21-analyte direct LC-MS/MS panel, the session will discuss assay selection, drug menus and cutoffs, specimen validity testing, cost and workflow considerations, result interpretation, and MRO adjudication. Participants will also discuss unresolved questions including cannabis, fentanyl, thebaine, appropriate detection thresholds, and what a positive urine drug result should mean in the employment setting. The current BSWH panel was implemented in September 2024. |
| Learning Objectives: | At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 1) Compare immunoassay-based and direct LC-MS/MS strategies for pre-employment drug testing. 2) Evaluate drug menu selection and cutoff concentrations based on analytical, regulatory, and operational considerations. 3) Interpret drug-testing results within an occupational-health workflow, including specimen validity and MRO adjudication. |
Course Content
Watch Webcast (Oct 15, 2026)
You don't currently have access to this content
Quiz for PD Credits (Oct 15, 2026)
You don't currently have access to this content