This week is National Laboratory Week. You won’t know about it, or hear about it unless you work in a lab. We are the unseen “lab” that runs tests on every conceivable body fluid or part. We handle surgical specimens for review by a pathologist. We prepare blood and blood products for transfusion. We are professionals in healthcare, providing information that allows doctors and nurses how to best treat or cure a patient. If you’ve ever had blood drawn, urine collected, wounds swabbed, had surgery or a biopsy, we’ve been involved in your care in some way. We are The Lab, working quietly behind the scenes to help diagnose and prevent disease, and educate everyone we come in contact with about health, disease and laboratory medicine.
As part of National Lab Week, I’ll answer questions relating to labs and what I do. Other MTs, MLTs, phlebotomists, CTs and HTs are welcome to join in.
Vlad/Igor, MT(ASCP)
BS MT, IU Medical School Med Tech Program, 1994.
National Laboratory Week–is that the week that the nation (I assume you mean the USA, right?) is supposed to notice and appreciate all labs, or is this the week specifically set aside to show appreciation for an institution called the National Laboratory?
If we’re supposed to be appreciating all laboratories–lots of labs don’t do anything that even resembles health care. Mine sure doesn’t. We do various projects in biological control of insect pests and other stuff in insect ecology.
Yay! Huzzah! Lab geeks rule!
My lab does environmental and metabolism testing on pesticides and herbicides. We help make sure that the chemicals being developed for use on your food won’t end up in your liver.
The method, as described by the tech (slightly paraphrased):
Crap in the cup.
Use the little stick to transfer samples to the two little cutouts on the card.
Close it up and put it in the zipper bag.
Take out the trash immediately.
I was tempted to tell her I learned how to smear it around while I was still a baby, but never quite mastered colouring inside the lines.
Another lab monkey checking in. I only deal with blood and the occasional chunk of tissue (we got a whole testicle in once), but the lab down the hall does all the stool samples. All I can tell you is that it always smells funny when you walk past that aisle. Sort of a mixture between feces and air freshener.
Our posters around our lab have ‘National Medical Laboratory Week’ on them so I don’t know if the week is for all labs or just medical labs. We get lunch and other goodies this week (Yeah!). Our lab manager has said that 80% of all medical decisions are made with the help of laboratory testing.
I work as a laboratory computer systems administrator now but I did used to work in many areas of the lab before I got my present position. Working with stool specimens wasn’t as bad as it sounds. You never really touch anything without gloves and we usually have hoods to work under to control aerosols and odors. Nearly all of our specimens that aren’t blood come in containers and we use swabs or pipettes to transfer them to other tubes for testing. Blood collection is really the only time we work directly with the patient. Nursing gets the job of collecting the yuck specimens and we get them in neat little vials.
Sorry, I should have specified “National Medical Laboratory Week.” I now work in a research lab, remotely connected to pathology, but I worked for seven years in hospital labs as a medical technologist (I still am an MT, but now a research MT). I now dabble in immunochemistry, HPLC, patient enrollment in experiments, and the occasional “real” clinical lab work.
By the time I got around to playing with poop, either on a Hemoccult® card or on agar plates, I had one child in diapers and one in pull-ups, so it didn’t bother me too much. You just concentrate on preparing the test correctly, and what you’re working with becomes less of an issue.
The worst sample I had to deal with was dissecting a gangrenous perineum from a guy to find tissue for a microbiology culture. I worked with that one under the hood, with a pathlologist kibbitzing on the side.
I don’t work in a medical lab so I guess I don’t get to participate in the festivities. poo
I work in a university lab processing water samples and algae (periphyton, for those in the know). We are doing baseline tests before some stream restoration work is done in the area. It’s actually pretty cool. If you are a science geek like moi!
Yep, medical technologists-the invisible flunkies of the hospital.
I suppose we’re having some sort of event to mark this week but I wouldn’t know. I work evening shift and all the fun stuff only happens on day shift.
Off-tour med techs-invisible among the invisible, practically nonexistent.
Supposedly this year there were a couple of public service spot run on t.v. about Lab Week. That’s something different.
I wish stool specimens came in neat little vials around here. Usually they’re in leaky containers stuffed in a biohazard bag which might not be fastened. But really they’re not too bad once you get used to it. Worst one I ever had was a specimen that had apparently been sitting around for a while before it got to the lab. The container was bulging-always a bad sign, gas production from the bacteria. I opened it gingerly, under the hood, and the stuff started welling out of the specimen cup. And it didn’t show any signs of stopping. Kinda reminded me of one of those tablets you light on the 4th of July that makes a really long snake of ash. I was a little concerned about how much this specimen might expand so I hurried up and finished culturing it then quickly closed the bag and put it in a disposal bucket. Fortunately that seemed to contain it and there was no re-enactment of “The Blob” that night.
Well, there oughta be something for lab techs and geeks. Maybe the NIH and National Academy of Science could get together and sponsor something. The only reason we celebrate medical lab week is that we’re loosely associated with pathology. Otherwise, we do straight-ahead science.
I work in a lab that process samples from patients participating in clinical trials of the drugs made by the biotech company I work for. I only handle serum, with the occasional urine sample thrown in for variety. :rolleyes:
Us other lab rats get no love. I manage a minerals lab. Material strength and such. Without people like me you would likely fall into your own stool sample as the toilet collapsed under you. :eek:
My mom works in the lab at the same hospital as i work. They make time to play some games and do little contests and things that Labfolk do for fun. I just hope they aren’t into throwing scat at a moving target. . . .
There’s really no reason it can’t be for all labs if we say it’s for all labs, right? I didn’t mean we could share it with everyone, I just thought that was why some of the other types of labs hadn’t heard about it.
I work for the Michigan Dept. of Community Health as a microbiologist, and have already gotten shut out of the lab euchre tournament. But tomorrow I plan to make an ass of myself at karaoke, so that more than makes up for it.
Thanks to all you hard-working fellow lab rats out there!
I manage a minerals lab. Material strength and such. Without people like me you would likely fall into your own stool sample as the toilet collapsed under you. :eek: