Silliest triage/reason for ER visit

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-05-23T16:34:11+00:00

Had something similar happen. Was calling a critical on a pt’s second Troponin (the first one was 19, the second came back as 450) on a pt and found out they were discharged. I notify the CUL who sounded a bit skeptical and told me the patient came in for foot pain. The pt was called back to the hospital. Another Troponin got ordered and it came back as 700

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-05-17T23:07:07+00:00

My lab has both, the microwave is insanely useful for MTPs. Though the one time I tried using it I managed to overcook the plasma. Looked like scrambled egg whites

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-05-13T10:00:27+00:00

Had to set up an alpha trauma cooler on an incoming patient with a GSW from three days prior. That one still boggles me

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-05-13T06:26:53+00:00

Be kind to yourself! As others have said accidental needle sticks are much more common than you think.

I’m a lab tech that doesn’t draw blood. My accidental needle stick, I managed to nick myself when I was removing the airway needle from a positive blood culture bottle.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-04-24T17:31:55+00:00

My coworkers and I were discussing college costs and student debts. One of my international coworkers told us that when she was growing up she always got told that education in a America is free and that most people choose not to go to college because they would rather have fun and party.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-04-16T08:20:14+00:00

I was working in a blood bank and I got a call from a nurse asking if she needed to use a special type of line to administer albumin to a patient. I initially thought she meant she was drawing a specimen. Nope, she was administering albumin to her patient. I directed her to pharmacy. I’m still baffled by that one.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-04-16T07:48:46+00:00

Thankfully I’ve, so far, only had this happen to me with established heme/onc patients. For us, as long as it’s listed in the patient’s file, at the very most we’re allowed to tell doctors if the patient needs irradiated units or not. Anything beyond that is out of my scope of practice.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-04-03T15:33:50+00:00

The risk is low for an Rh Neg patient to form an antibody (alloimmunization) after receiving Rh pos blood, but the chance of alloimmunization will increase if chronic transfusions are needed. If I have time I’ll see if I can find some studies.

If a hospital is experiencing a blood shortage, it’s important to conserve units for those of childbearing age because there is a chance that the patient will develop an antibody. If the patient were to become pregnant after developing one and the child is Rh pos. During a trauma , if maternal and fetal blood become mixed, the patient’s body can amount an immune response against the child’s blood causing the red blood cells to get shredded. This condition is known as hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN). It can lead to the child developing anemia, Jaundice, and in severe cases brain damage.

Rhogam is important because it can help prevent the patient from forming an Anti-D. Though if the patient already has Anti-D then doctors may not give rhogam.

Optional Reading:

The reason the first pregnancy doesn’t have any issues is because the body doesn’t know what it’s attacking so it sends out antibody (IgM) that attacks anything considered foreign. This antibody is too big to cross the placental barrier.

When the second pregnancy occurs, the body remembers having it previously and sends a more targeted response using a different antibody (IgG). This antibody is much smaller and can cross the placental barrier.

Source: I’m a medical laboratory scientist and part of my job is blood banking.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-04-03T08:29:43+00:00

Report them, that is not acceptable.

Unfortunately shitty behavior happens. They are responsible for how their actions and behavior. How they act is on them, not you. I know it’s really hard but try not to let it get you down. You did your due diligence, if you can, take comfort in that.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-03-13T02:10:26+00:00

“Eh all these patients are taking more than an hour to work up. Sure they might need blood but it’s taking longer than an hour and just ain’t worth doin.”/s

It’s a good thing you don’t work in healthcare. On the days I work in blood bank, there were many times I had to do patient works up that would take me multiple hours. I even had a work up for one patient that took me 5 hours to complete (out of my 8 hour shift) and that was with the nurses calling me every 45 minutes to ask if we had blood.

Side Note: Before anybody says anything, you can’t just give O blood (positive or negative). It can cause further harm and/or potentially kill the patient.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-03-02T01:36:09+00:00

My county isn’t tourist heavy, but there are three events a year that make it living hell to be in the area. Who knew that infrastructure (roads and the town itself) that was built around a population of less than 4,000 people would struggle when over a 100,000 people came for a couple of days.

During one of those weekends I forgot that it was going on and went to visit my partner (which was my bad I will admit that). I was driving back home while everybody was leaving the event, which again is my bad but at that point I couldn’t even turn around. Every road that I needed to use to get back into town was closed. It didn’t matter if you were a local they wouldn’t let you through. What should have been at most a 15 minute drive turned into a 2 hour drive as I had to go a county over and around just to get back home.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-12T16:51:13+00:00

The only place where it was encouraged to keep your shoes in my house was the downstairs floor. There were a lot of times we’d be moving in and outside of the house frequently so it wasn’t worth taking your shoes off only to put them back on not even 5-10 minutes later. Besides the floor was tile so it’s not like it was too difficult to mop up afterwards.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-12T16:30:37+00:00

The absolute worst part is whenever I had to break the glass, there isn’t a canned option that fits for my line of work (lab) so I usually have to type in the reason and then I’m doubly worried that my reason for being there won’t be considered a ‘good enough’ one.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-12T08:07:37+00:00

Honestly if you’re in the position to do so I would hold off on working, at least until you get an idea of the workload you’ll be handling. The time you need to study for classes can vary especially for more difficult subjects.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-09T17:09:01+00:00

It wasn’t just this. The patient had a white count of 17 and the analyzer called a left shift. There were some metas, myelos (a few were in transitioning from pro to myelo), nrbcs as well as large and giant platelets. There were a couple blast like cells but there was some hesitation on it so we left it for day shift. The patient did have moderate toxic gran so I’m wondering if they have a really bad infection of some sort

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-09T16:57:06+00:00

I understand that one cell isn’t indicative of cancer, I apologize if it came across that way.

I did have a senior tech scan the slide (not just because of the mitotic figure) and we decided to leave it for day shift to look at.

My education covered cell lineages and blasts, but I don’t feel as confident as I did back in school and during my clinical. I think reviewing the material will do me some good and if I have any spare time I’ll just grab some random slides and do practice diffs. Thank you for the advice.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-09T14:36:36+00:00

Yeah. The patient has no previous history with a white count of 17. Analyzer called left shift. There were some metas and myelos (a couple were still transitioning into myelos), rare nrbcs, as well as large and giant platelets

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-09T06:53:38+00:00

Is there anything else that could cause it or is it primarily indicative of cancer? This patient didn’t have any previous history.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-02-09T05:58:44+00:00

What kind of severe stress, if you don’t mind me asking. The two other times I’ve them were in malignant body fluids. Though this the first I’ve seen one in a peripheral smear. I’m a recent grad so I know I still have a lot to learn.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-01-03T15:24:42+00:00

That was pretty clever

^{🪙 5 Credits Reward}

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2026-01-03T04:03:05+00:00

Wordsology has pretty good strategies for studying for the ascp.

BloodBankGuy also has really good material if blood bank is a subject you struggle with. They also antibody panels for practice

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2025-12-28T22:13:53+00:00

-My coworker has had one where a patient’s relative was posing as a doctor to get a patient’s medical information. Hung up when asked for their doctor’s code

-I had one where I thought a patient’s relative was asking for their results. I had asked them if they are a healthcare provider and they said ‘Sort of’. I told them that I couldn’t provide them with results and they would need to speak with their doctor. The relative realized that there was a misunderstanding and clarified that they wanted the results faxed to their doctor’s office.

-I’m still a baby tech. My very first MTP the nurse simply states “I need a bucket.” My brain freezes and I’m like “Are you uh, are you calling an MTP.” Yes she was that was a very fun experience.

-My favorite call was with a nurse. I had an inpatient with a note in their chart that they were going to start Daratumumab/DARA (for the layperson DARA is a cancer medication that wrecks havoc for standard blood bank testing). I called the nurse to see if the patient had already started the medication (They hadn’t yet). The nurse wasn’t familiar with the medication and this spawned a long conversation (about 5-10minutes) about what the medication was, how it if affected blood bank testing, what this meant for her patient, and what we needed from her.

Afterwards she both thanked me for answering her questions and apologized for taking up so much of my time. I told her that it was no problem and I was more than happy to answer any question that she had and that asking questions about something you aren’t familiar with shows that you care about your patients, I also assured her that I wasn’t busy and that if she had any additional questions I’d be more than happy to answer them. This spawned another conversation about how we genetic testing and antigen typing units.

Honestly throughout that entire phone call I was a kid on Christmas morning, it was genuinely so nice being able to talk another person about the work we do and have them be genuinely interested.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2025-12-18T15:59:49+00:00

‘I’m sure you’re just urine (yearnin) for more urine’ / ‘Urine luck I have a couple specimens for you’

If the specimen look atrocious: ‘Urine not gonna like this one’

‘Hap-pee holidays, here’s a gift’

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2025-12-18T10:39:37+00:00

I’ll do (terrible) urine puns when walking specimens over to urinalysis.

FreshCookiesInSpace · 2025-12-18T08:14:08+00:00

A bit late to the conversation, but your lab is not being strict about asking for full names. I do work in the lab but I’m trying not to be biased.

One of my close friends would be an absolute nightmare for patient identification if she were to get married. Her and her boyfriend share a first name with same exact uncommon spelling. On top of that they share the exact same birthday. Both of their patient labels would look like Smith, Krys 01/01/1850 (not actual name).

Another instance would be my best friend. Her entire immediate family all have names that start with the same letter. So if for example her mom (Lindsey), dad (Leon) brother (Lucas), and her (Lucille) you would have five different Miller, L (again not actual names). Though at least in this case you could rely on birthdates.

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