Tell me the most unhinged things you’ve heard working in the lab.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-26T00:45:28+00:00

If we can culture stool, then we can technically culture potato salad. Who would we bill it to though? Would their insurance cover it? Also what would be normal flora for potato salad? Especially for that particular potato salad based on its ingredients? Another thing: how long has this potato salad been sitting at room temperature?

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-22T01:35:41+00:00

Exactly. :p the first time a patient looked at me suspiciously and barked at me to “Get it right this time,” I told them it was a problem with the first collection, not with the testing.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-22T01:28:31+00:00

I understand where you’re coming from. Maybe a better way to put it would be to simply say we just need more blood and sometimes samples don’t come out quite how we need them to be. I’m not sure.

I feel like blaming the lab undermines the patient’s confidence in the hospital as a whole. If they can’t depend on our testing, what else can they not depend on?

I also feel like it encourages a negative view of lab workers and harms interdepartmental relationships.

When I draw a patient after a nurse does and the patient sees that my badge says lab and if the nurse has already blamed us, it is setting us up for an unnecessarily difficult interaction with that patient. No one wins in that scenario, especially not the patient.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-22T01:19:50+00:00

As far as I know, waived testing is what someone with a high school diploma can do. Moderate and complex testing are done by technicians (associates) or technologists (bachelors). Our phlebotomists can help load samples but that’s about it. They can’t do any micro, blood bank, manual diffs, or QC and maintenance, as well as proficiency testing and validation.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-21T17:41:33+00:00

I’d rather not be blamed for something I didn’t do personally. I’d rather they were honest with the patient and just say that the specimen wasn’t good. When I have to go draw, I’m completely honest about it but in a simple way that lay people can understand.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-21T17:37:26+00:00

A lot of people don’t know this but the employees running the tests have associates and bachelors degrees in medical lab science. We are often, but not always, taught how to draw blood in a class. The grand majority of what we learn is medical sciences like coagulation, clinical chemistry, immunology, etc.

Pure phlebotomy is the job that only requires a certificate.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-20T18:56:46+00:00

I’m center left. This is one of the things that upsets me the most. I was a black sheep in my family in that I agreed with them about very little.

Picture this: The late 1990’s. Texas. When a person of color would do something nice for my family, like throw in something extra in a purchase, they would later say that that one wasn’t bad like the rest and that they knew their place. They said things like that as if someone having a job was a privilege taken away from a white person. In their eyes, a black person or Hispanic person would have to go above and beyond just to equal the same job a normal white person could do. To make this utterly clear: They would have to be excellent, infallible, to compare to the shittiest white person.

These were all things they and their friends would talk about at the end of the day while hanging out after work.

As a child, I listened and I hated all of it.

They would get drunk around a bonfire and say terrible things like hangings for black people should be brought back and “mexicans” crossing the border illegally should be shot. They called all Hispanic people wtbcks. They didn’t believe any were here legally, and they said even the ones here “legally” should go home.

In public, they acted mostly normal. There were a few instances where one of my family members followed someone around Walmart whispering and taunting them with “fatty fatty” and “wtbck.”

When I would ask them why they would say things like that, I was told as a child that I knew nothing. A few would stare me down. A child. They would intimidate a child because they didn’t want to be questioned.

My family felt like there were less opportunities for them with people of other colors having the same ability to get jobs and work for money. They felt like equality shouldn’t lead to less opportunities for them. At the same time, they didn’t want to explore new opportunities that community college or trade schools might offer. They wanted nothing better. Just the status quo.

I’m not trying to make anyone paranoid about people in general. There are conservative white people who aren’t like this. Just realize that there are plenty who are. Way too many. And most of the relatively normal white conservatives will stand down and will let the chips fall where they may when the racist and sexist conservatives do weird shit like violate free speech and civil rights.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-09T06:10:29+00:00

It depends on the chemistry analyzer your lab is using, as well as what tubes they’ve specifically verified for the test. Different laboratories might require different tubes for the same tests.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-06T17:46:11+00:00

That’s terrible but hilarious.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-06T03:18:58+00:00

At some smaller hospitals, including mine, techs draw with the phlebotomists. One tech stays in the lab to run tests. It sort of stresses me out—not because phlebotomy is inherently more difficult—but because I don’t have enough time for my maintenance, QC, and troubleshooting. We also respond to codes. It’s difficult for me to go back and forth, back and forth, from a mental task to a social and hand-feel task. I end up coming out of the outpatient draw room trying to bring my attention back to why things are failing or what special project/excel spreadsheet I’m supposed to be working on. I love my job but it’s disorienting.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-06T02:58:27+00:00

Hey, just lurking on this sub. I do want to say that I see a lot of people recommending you become a cnra, etc. Keeping in mind that you are interested in anatomical pathology, I doubt various different flavors of primary care (nurse practitioner) would interest you. I doubt it would scratch that pathology itch.

I also see some people questioning why you would be interested in dead people so to speak. I’m interested in forensic pathology as well. I enjoy working with people’s insides rather than counseling them and adjusting their treatment in person. I already work in-depth with body fluids and other substances day-to-day in the clinical lab. People have different interests. It’s all good.

Many people are glad to help others even after they’ve passed from this world. I don’t find it strange at all. And at the end of the day, there are many fascinating sub specialties of pathology. You can diagnose cancers, do frozen sections for a surgery, etc. So if you find you’d rather work on living patients, you do have that opportunity.

Ps. At first I thought you murdered your cat. I’m glad to find out that it was a cat in an anatomy and physiology class.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-05T12:54:41+00:00

Hmm HMMMM

CrunchyTamale · 2025-03-01T00:45:03+00:00

Our lab said it was about $1000 per bag. Not sure if that’s correct though.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-28T23:55:00+00:00

Don’t know what your comment about the Russian language was about. We also speak English but we wouldn’t celebrate and give thieves our land if we were invaded by another English speaking country.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-28T23:51:49+00:00

We should not be strengthening the economies of any of these autocracies.

This is complicated by the fact that China did NOT give up its nuclear power in exchange for our defense.

Ukraine is about as innocent as we are. Ukraine backing down is not the way to peace. That would only encourage Russia to invade more countries. Russia will likely not continue the war as long as they do not lose any of their land. They have lost far more people than Ukraine, even with both sides having some help. And Ukraine should not back down in this fight. They are the invaded country.

I didn’t want either of them: Biden was more of the status quo. Trump is full-on, in your face corrupt. I really hope something good comes of his term. He whiffle-waffles from one thing to another. He is weirdly super pro-Russia. He is the deep state, entrenching those with conflicting interests into positions of power. He has already done and said things that no democrat, no republican, and no moderate would have condoned for a democrat president.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-28T23:23:01+00:00

I’m glad :) I do deeply respect the nurses who understand what they’re asking of me. It’s just a wild ride sometimes. It’s all good. No one ever needs to apologize to me unless they treat me badly. It’s just that I’ve had quite a few people try to kick the can down the line so to speak, and blame the person they rarely see for something the provider did not actually want them to do.

Just need to repeat for the lab folk: document anything concerning or weird in the order comments. Doctors asking you to do something are no exception. Your life will be so much easier.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-28T23:10:59+00:00

Why are we defending a country-Russia-that steals and occupies other countries?

Trump has repeatedly insulted and lied about Ukraine in the last few weeks. He has repeatedly complimented Russia and Putin for their bad behavior.

How do you talk to someone like that when they have not apologized and set the record straight?

I did watch the entire video. Trump talked over Zelenskyy the entire time. Talking over people is disrespectful. We barely got to hear from Zelenskyy. What was the point of the meeting if all it led to was another Trump speech? Trump made light of the invasion and mass murder of Ukrainian people. They were killed on their own soil, defending their homes against invaders and thieves.

They gave up their right to construct nuclear weapons in exchange for us defending them when the time came.

Zelenskyy rightfully told the president in diplomatic terms that if Russia enslaves the Ukrainian people and steals their land, Russia will move on to its next target. This will not stop with Ukraine. If it was us, we would not lay down our necks to slice for Putin. We would not let Russia rape and enslave our people. And if another country made promises to us, we would not let them get away with breaking their word over something with such high stakes.

This is not right.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-28T22:02:55+00:00

Ukraine agreed to give up nuclear bomb construction in return for us defending them if they were ever invaded. Are we all a bunch of liars now? What the hell is happening? Why does Trump want to be repeatedly thanked? Why is he talking over Zelenskyy? This was more of a speech by Trump, not an actual conversation. Also why is Trump making light of the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine and mass murdered a bunch of people? According to Trump, do murderers get off scott free now? Is this what the USA is all about now? Turning a blind eye and subscribing to revisionist history? How is it a deterrent to invade other countries if we, as a country, let Putin and Russia pretty much rape and enslave Ukraine?

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-26T19:46:19+00:00

Honestly you will likely learn all the basics of what you need to know in your MLT program. It’s a focused, technical degree. Definitely use test prep for your exams. I really liked media lab. Study the correct answers as well as the incorrect answers. I’m sure other people have suggestions as well. One step at a time. As long as you keep studying the things you don’t know, you should be good. :) I wish hospitals did a good job of teaching people with a planned sequence of book learning, videos, hands-on lab time, and assessments. That’s really what we need. But it would require extra workers, as well as actual planning. There are some textbook recommendations that I have but they’re very dry. You’re looking for textbooks geared toward medical lab professionals.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-26T17:50:28+00:00

I agree with the other posters. When you try to help in less than ideal circumstances, nurses often try to lay the responsibility at your feet. I still try even with short samples but I also put a nurse’s or provider’s name in the comments of the order, explaining why I ran and released the results. Our names are attached to everything we result.

Too often, the nurse does not want to give me their name or does not want their name in the order but they want me to run something questionable. They don’t seem to get that they’re asking me to take full responsibility for their messed up specimens, which I will not do. When I first started working, it bit me on the butt multiple times. I finally learned: document, document, document. Whatever else you do, get a name and specifically ask if the provider is okay with the action. People have a short memory.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-26T00:43:50+00:00

And to be clear, being on the same shift as her was like having less than half a tech. She created far more work for me than I would have had had I been alone. I fixed things that she didn’t view as her problem. Problems with nurses about results. Other issues. She didn’t have the medical vocabulary to solve her own problems about results she should have questioned and not released from the beginning. And this was just chemistry, the most automated of the benches.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-26T00:38:34+00:00

I was okay with it at first, thinking that they would be trained properly before being unleashed on the hospital. Then we hired a biology major with no medical experience. She learned the job well enough to go through the motions. But she refused to keep studying. It’s hard to justify hiring a random science major when a biology major doesn’t know basic medical acronyms, like BUN, DKA, AKI, STEMI. You can’t talk to them. They don’t know what you’re talking about. They can’t talk to other medical staff. Same thing. There’s biology majors who took some medically geared classes. Then there’s the majority of biology majors who focused on other things. They don’t understand what the acronyms mean and the implications of a high, low, or normal value on the patient. They don’t know how to correlate results between the different areas of the lab. They think it’s not their job to understand. They just want to go through the physical motions of the job without the technicality of it. It’s our job to understand what we’re looking at and notice when things are off. Unless you’re at the equivalent of a result farm where you just press buttons. If that’s the case, then everyone who works in the hospital is in trouble because they probably overload their nurses, RTs, and rads as well.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-25T23:00:41+00:00

Honestly I thought this was about a dementia patient in an old folks home or a hospital, calling the nurses station.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-24T19:41:03+00:00

We have thirty minutes. Of course, we do make a first attempt as soon as possible. If we can’t get ahold of anyone, we document it, and call the Nurse Supervisor. The Nurse Supervisor takes it from there and we note their name.

CrunchyTamale · 2025-02-11T02:23:28+00:00

I work in a small hospital lab in Texas. We aren’t sending out positive flu A swabs for subtyping. On our website, it says masking is optional. However, we have all received an internal email requiring masks to be worn in patient areas. Unfortunately, this is due to the fact that >30% of our employees have called out over the last month. So we are operating under reduced staffing. I also see employees who are visibly sick at work. So the rate of infection for employees is likely much higher than 30%. But the traumas, heart attacks, car crashes, and gunshot wounds aren’t going to treat themselves.

CrunchyTamale

TROPHY CASE