#lab techs

Picture of the Day

There’s now a groundbreaking collaboration that is leaving some in the culinary world simmering with interest. A team of lab technicians and engineers have embarked on a mission to speed up the notoriously patient slow cooker. Project Crock-Potential, as it’s aptly named, aims to bring the joy of slow-cooked meals to our fast-paced modern era. A team, consisting of scientists who specialize in…

Tech 1: Water.

(Rock that tech 1 found and brought it to their desk.)

Tech 2: Water.

(Moss tech 2 found and put it by their desk.)

In the latest episode apparently the doctor goes down to the “lab” to check on some biopsy results and there the “lab techs” are just sitting around, typing on computers looking utterly useless and bored.  (Also, hello to the wall of windows!  Like that ever happens!). 

Later in the episode, a patient needs to have a test run, called a D-Dimer and the doctor rushes the specimen to the lab and hands it over to the tech with no more than a verbal order and an unlabeled tube.

*headdesk*

I just.... I can’t even. 

I get that medical dramas, even dramas in general, are not going to get everything right.  But dammit.  Why does the lab always have to look like utter shit?  The doctors and nurses are always the heroes and the lab techs are the incompetent idiots who sit around and either do nothing or fuck things up. 

As a laboratory professional, this pisses me off to no end. 

With this particular episode it’s several things.  One, we don’t sit around computers in what looks like an office setting typing memos and looking more like a secretary than a lab tech. 

No we are constantly running around the lab.  Working over a microscope or lab bench, not sitting at a desk.  Hell, most of the time not sitting period!

The window thing is a pet peeve but hey, maybe they are lucky enough to have a bay of windows to the outside world.  But 9 times out of 10?  Not even.  Not one single window in the place. 

The handing a specimen over without a label and a verbal order?  Where do I begin?  Because, oh yeah, as a lab tech if I ran that specimen then I actually would be an idiot.  No orders in the computer.  Check.  No patient identifiers on the tube.  Check, check.  Yeah, who’s the idiot now?

But again, dramatic license.  I get it..... to a degree.  But this isn’t a one off, it’s an ongoing thing that happens time and again, show after show.

Grey’s Anatomy, for example.  I don’t watch the show, but I saw a screen cap from an episode where someone drops a specimen off to the lab.  To “hematology” to be specific but the plaque on the wall?  It spells “hemotology”. Really?  You can’t be bothered with even spelling the name right?

How many times did I watch the show ER and hear them whine and complain about the lab?  How many times did they “screw up” or “took forever” to get a result out? 

And it’s not just the tv shows, movies are just as bad.  Anyone remember the movie Outbreak?  It came out in the mid 90′s I believe.  This idiot lab tech is listening to something on the radio, not paying attention to what he’s doing and sticks his hand in a centrifuge that hasn’t stopped.  It breaks the vial, slinging blood everywhere, including his face.  A move that ultimately infects him, and then the entire town as he goes to the movie theater later that evening.

We are not that fucking stupid.  No tech would do that.  That’s absurd.

The list goes on and on.  I just get sick of it.  Maybe it’s because I’m also tired of being chewed out by nurses (and even a few doctors on occasion) because of one thing or another.  And the general assumption that we sit on our asses doing nothing. 

My response is always this:  Do you want it fast or do you want it right? 

Some things cannot be rushed.  And there are times it’s not even us.  Nurses or even phlebotomists who send short samples or tubes that are hemolyzed (red cells are ruptured, leaving the sample unfit for use in most cases) or clotted. 

They bitch and moan because oh yes the lab made them do it, made them have to redraw.  No, it’s because we do our jobs properly.  Because we care about the results we turn out.  Because we care that the patient gets the proper treatment based on those results. 

But try telling a nurse that.  They will tell you we just want to be difficult or that we “really could use sample A if we really wanted to” and so on. 

So my point is this.  Where are the stories about the lab coming to the rescue?  Where are the stories that tell how a lab tech discovered a patient had a rare condition?  Or even saved their lives by finding an anomalous result? 

There is a reason that laboratory professionals are termed, “the unsung heroes”.  It’s true.  We are the people working behind the scenes, the ones you don’t see.  But don’t belittle us.  Don’t degrade us for our work.  Without us the doctor wouldn’t know whether you have a virus or a bacterial infection. 

Without us, he wouldn’t know what type of bacteria is responsible for your infection and what antibiotics can treat it.  Without us, he/she wouldn’t know just how dehydrated you are and how bad your kidneys are.  They wouldn’t know how extensive the muscle damage is after that heart attack you suffered.

The list goes on and on. 

Remember that the next time you complain about how long it takes to get your lab results.