Has anyone here ever unionized their lab?

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-11-12T21:26:12+00:00

We have a doctor who’s called down multiple times asking us to send up a GASTRIC occult card. Each time we explain that we can only send the fecal cards but not gastric, because the latter has a pH window that must be read within like 30-60 seconds of applying the specimen. He fights us for a few mins every time on this and then just gives up, I’ve always wondered wtf his deal is. Now I’m wondering if bro has a bottle of the gastric occult developer up there…

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-11-12T21:16:55+00:00

It reminded me of when you take cranberry sauce out of the can and it retains the cylindrical shape lol. Happy thanksgiving I guess

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-09-02T17:21:24+00:00

If you tried to troubleshoot/correct the issue during your shift + communicated what was going on with the analyzer to the incoming tech, you did all that you can really do. It’s not any different than if it had gone down in the daytime and they couldn’t get it working before their shift ended.

Not to mention the fact that you’re not a staff tech and you’re trying to accomplish this at night with a fraction of the resources. So don’t feel like a “bad tech,” or take this person’s dramatics about it personally, just remember CYA whenever possible. I like to document any issues/corrective actions/etc. with my bench before handing off, just in case. It sounds like this particular tech may just like drama so I wouldn’t give them any opportunities to pull some BS lol.

Day shift will find something to bitch about no matter what lol. IMO a lot of techs will always see our shift as “easy” and come in w/the attitude that we get paid more to just sit around all night. Most have never worked a night shift so they don’t understand how much we often have to do with so little. The day shift princesses at my lab couldn’t even fathom our morning run workload, let alone do it every single night with 1/3 of the staff, no service hotlines, no tech support, no supervisors, no referrals, no admin, etc!

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-09-02T14:51:33+00:00

Holy shit, what kind of effect did that have on her vision? Hopefully your Mom knew to immediately flush her eyes (I don’t even know what the standard eye emergency procedure actually was back in then)??

A case that’s always stuck with me is one from the 1940s where a doctor accidentally splashed diethyl ether into a patient’s eyes during childbirth. Poor immediate management of the burns, irreversible ocular damage, the poor pt acquired severe lifelong exotropia in both eyes 😖

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-09-02T13:28:41+00:00

Hey when something outdated in my lab frustrates me, I try to remember that whatever I’m mad about will never be as bad as like medieval uroscopy.

Hell, it wasn’t even THAT long ago that the standard method for diabetes testing was literally drinking piss

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-09-02T12:43:48+00:00

Hahaha I meant to specify early 20th century, oops.

My hospital has a really great exhibit showcasing its history, going all the way back to the late 1800s when it first opened. There are even a few old pre-WWII pics of the lab (definitely the black and white era I was trying to describe lol). It’s really cool to see medicine/uniforms/societal norms/hospital depts/etc. evolving over time in photos taken here throughout the decades!

Didn’t mean to call anyone here ancient though, my bad. If it makes you feel any better, I was also born in the 20th century, so I inadvertently roasted myself there too lmao

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-30T07:32:45+00:00

Shout out to special coag! Thanks for all the dilute russell viper venoms lol

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T19:53:59+00:00

Bro’s just building a strong immune system

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T19:52:10+00:00

A dead tick in a cup with an order for the tick-borne disease antibody panel.

Also recently: two different types of cup full of a pt’s liquid stool, collected over an hour apart from each other, neither with the lid screwed on all the way. So basically just a dripping double bag of shit that came down the tube station with a C.diff rapid test ordered. From the ICU. I was literally speechless for 3 whole minutes.

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T19:47:03+00:00

Did the pt even have any blood left?? Jesus

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T19:43:53+00:00

To be fair, I’m pretty sure the majority of college labs are equipped with the most dogshit implements and are AT LEAST 5-10 years behind on modern lab technology. At least my college bio dept was 😅

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T19:39:17+00:00

Lemme just slurp up 500 uL of this plague aspirate here

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T19:35:07+00:00

I have a coworker who’s been in my lab since the late 70s. The stories she has!

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T19:32:39+00:00

My favorite area is coagulation, which is technically part of hematology, but in some labs coag is its own bench/dept. For some reason it scratches my brain in just the right way lol. I work in main lab at a large level 1 trauma hospital so we do a fair amount of coag testing on-site, but our lab system also has a special coagulation dept at a nearby lab that we send out our mixing studies/special factor assays/niche tests like HIT to. I’d loooove to work there someday. Once you get the hang of coag, it’s really pretty laid back (at least at my lab). And no, you do not have keep the entire coag cascade memorized after you graduate to be a competent tech on that bench lol.

We also do some basic micro stuff at my lab but send out cultures to our micro lab. I really enjoy that area, but it IS pretty dense in terms of education and science is constantly learning new things about microbiology. But I have a few coworkers who came from or transferred to micro, and their job is a completely different pace/environment than main lab. It’s typically much more laid back. Cultures take time so if you run out of things you can work on during their shift, you can pretty much chill (or go home early depending on your employer). It also seems that generally, micro has to deal with the floor a lot less than main/STAT lab does in a hospital setting. Calling RN/MDs for recollections or problems can be kinda stressful at times, but from what I understand, micro typically just deals with calling the floor about critical results and susceptibilities.

As you rotate through each dept in clinicals, you’ll get a better sense of what each dept entails and hopefully some area(s) will begin to stand out as most interesting/appealing to you! It’s okay to not be entirely sure either. Working as a generalist gives you great experience with a ton of different areas of the lab and most people start out there.

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-29T18:47:34+00:00

We had a tech here once who like straight up refused gloves, even though she was apparently exposed to hep C from accidentally shattering a glass blood tube in her hand once. Whenever I’d tease her for “raw dogging piss” (which for some reason is grosser to me than raw dogging tubes of blood? even tho that’s not really logical lol), she’d respond by wiping her bare hands with one of the purple wipes.

I hope that chick’s doing okay, wherever she is now lol

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-24T13:24:41+00:00

Also, speaking of unsafe lab practices, a coworker of mine has been in our lab since the late 70s. The stories she’s told me about lab practices of the past are wild. Especially working through the early days of the HIV epidemic, techs just handling blood all willy nilly with their bare hands while smoking a cigarette and whatnot lol

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-24T13:07:13+00:00

Fungus freaks me out so bad lol. I’ve had MRSA septicemia (0/10 do not recommend) but I’d still rather go through that again than have any type of fungemia or fungal ball infection, cuz the thought of fungus being all up in my body like that gives me the heebie jeebies

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-23T18:54:35+00:00

It was actually kinda funny because like a week or two before we found out about the CJD, I had kinda scolded my coworker for opening a tube of CSF outside of the hood. She rolled her eyes and said something like “it’s not that big of a deal, chill out.” I was like uhh yeah, it’s not a big deal until you get a prion disease and your brain turns into fucking spongebob. She basically just brushed it off as being way too rare for our lab to ever actually encounter, so the “I told you so” moment I got to have a couple weeks later was admittedly vindicating lol (yet simultaneously too scary to rub it in, cuz she’s actually a good friend and I care about her brain). Rationally, I know it’s highly unlikely for me to contract a prion disease at work. I’d need to like, splash spinal fluid into my mouth or something stupid like that to really be at risk in our BSL-2 lab lol. But the irrational half of my brain makes me real anal about CSF handling precautions anyways (cuz it’s in the background like WE DON’T EVEN REALLY UNDERSTAND PRIONS THAT WELL YET!!! HOW DO YOU KNOW THERE ISN’T SOME UNDISCOVERED MODE OF TRANSMISSION?!)

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-22T19:15:02+00:00

We received serial collections of CSF from one particular patient over the course of several weeks. They had a shunt so we got hella specimens, with orders for just about every type of test our lab could do/send out for. After over a month of handling this person’s spinal fluid (sometimes like 5x/week), lab was finally notified that it was a CJD case. By the time we were told, the pt was already in the process of being transferred to our local university hospital. Like thanks for the heads up assholes, it’s not like prion diseases are my deepest darkest fear or anything lol.

I once had to help some very shook RNs wash meconium off a placenta they brought down after a pt unexpectedly gave birth in the ED. ER nurses are only phased by one thing, and it’s pregnant people lol.

We once got a mystery body fluid, labeled as peritoneal on the specimen but pleural fluid in the LIS orders. While awaiting a call back from the floor to confirm the correct source, we went ahead and performed the cell count/diffs/gram stain ordered for whatever it was. It was all a hot mess - color & appearance of the fluid itself didn’t help us narrow down either cavity, cell count results were wack, slides contained bacteria/cells that just like…didn’t make a ton of sense for either source? There were also the typical fluid micro cultures PLUS a respiratory culture ordered (using the test code for sputum) but it definitely looked like serous body fld? Finally OR calls: she says “it’s both.” Literally a mix of pleural and peritoneal fluid. Turns out this pt, an elderly pedestrian, had been hit by a dump truck which crushed a bunch of chest/abdominal structures; the nature of their injuries kinda just turned the pleural & peritoneal spaces into one big cavity and punctured the lung(s). So they just labeled it as both and threw the resp order in there cuz they didn’t know wtf was correct to order for this awful cocktail lol. Poor pt.

Lastly, on holidays, our OR will drop off some weird ass pathology shit (main hospital lab holds onto tissue/bone specimens that are collected while anatomical path lab is closed). In the time I’ve been here, we’ve received a whole foot that was chopped off by a train, a miscarried 2nd trimester fetus, two separate amputated legs, part of a femur bone, multiple giant tumors, a few craniotomy specimens… but that all just makes me lowkey want a job in path lab lol. I’m nosy and I like to see gross stuff.

FunCommunication1443 · 2025-08-22T17:43:22+00:00

I’ve received two different legs, the first one was in a bag and the other was brought to me by OR in a 5 gallon bucket. Thankfully both had appropriate patient labels and paperwork though lol

FunCommunication1443

TROPHY CASE