Liann

I am a med tech in the Blood Bank. When I worked on Thanksgiving, an OR nurse came to pick up blood and told me I could take my time getting it ready because she was on double-triple overtime.....isnt that wonderful? (I sure as heck was NOT getting any of that kind of pay) I told her we only have ONE speed in the Blood Bank and that is STAT Even if I did get that kind of money , I definitely would not go around bragging to other departments about it. No wonder the animosity continues.....

Prmenrs: The first book in the Anne Perry series about Nurse Hester Latterly (and her detective and lawyer friends) is called Face of a Stranger.

Some thoughts I had on reading this thread.... I went to Medical Technology school in 1982...yeah...its ancient history...and we were taught to do hemacytometer grid counts for CBC as well as the little dilution pipettes that you had to SUCK up on to make the dilution. What happens if you draw up too hard? YUM... Eventually we were issued little rubber tubing pipettor mouthpieces, but they were hard to use since you already learned the other way! We did quite a lot of labor intense hand method chemistry tests. These would of course be cast aside to be replaced by multi analyzers before we even graduated. Blood bank type and cross has become a bit more streamlined, but is still very similar to what I learned 20+ years ago. BUT...I have been told that a lot of the old ways are still practiced in developing countries where analyzers are too expensive or require too much power to run. I mentioned in another thread about good nursing reads that I enjoy books by Anne Perry who writes about a nurse in the 1860s who served in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale. Hester's nursing practice is fascinating to read...and her knowledge of herbal remedies is awesome. Nurses were also the pharmacists then, I guess!

If taking the very best care of the patient is the goal, then someone has to draw the lab tests. I am a laboratorian and I do my very best to work with whatever clotted, hemolyzed, skimpy sample I get. I never call for a recollect if I dont absolutely have to. People who are in a hurry often forget to label tubes, or draw the wrong color tube, or struggle to get an ABG, and I can't help that I must get a recollect. Please give us the same benefit of the doubt that you would like to receive from us. I hope that the above mentioned sadistic tech is a rarity.

I see The Ciderhouse Rules by John Irving is on the list. It is not strictly about nursing, but is one of my favorite (medically related) books of all time. It really makes you think...

WOW...that is some list, landonsles! I will have to go through it when I have more time!!!! Thanks.

Are the pharmaceutical companies starting to market coumedin in prefilled PEZ dispensors? Must be....I work in the Blood Bank, and it seems as if all we do anymore is thaw mass quantities of FFP. Docs yelling for it...and it takes 30 min to thaw....remember, it's FROZEN.....

I forgot Tess Gerritsen! Awesome stories! I read somewhere that Stephen King himself is her biggest fan......thats a great endorsement!

I figured someone would say that

We Band of Angels was wonderful, but The Healers War by the same author about Vietnam was not as good. It was OK, but had a slant that I did not agree with. Maybe Vietnam is still too touchy a subject? The M*A*S*H books are funny and also have a political commentary theme. Echo Heron's books are also very fun to read. Particia Cornwell is a bit depressing, and the characters get whiny after a while. Robin Cook, great of course...all of those Coma type stories. Michael Crichton stories are always a good bet...he thought up the E.R. TV show! Anne Perry has several series of Victorian era books...one concerns a nurse just back from the Crimea named Hester who marries a detective named Monk. She helps solve mysteries in between working towards hospital and health care reforms! These books are all great...and the nursing issues are well researched. I will try to think of some more... Can you tell that I read a lot? :chuckle

I think the confusion comes from the definition of STAT. This staus should only be used when a result is dire, as was previously stated. People abuse STAT status to get thing moving quickly for various reasons, such as STAT Rhogam orders we get for outpatient prenatal visits...yeah, Blood Banker...drop that transfusion you are working on and get that Rhogam STAT so the patient can get on with HER busy day. Our Blood Bank also runs all blood gases and STAT chemistries for the entire hospital, including the OR. You try deciding which is more important, the gas or the transfusion...sometimes on the same patient! Our protocol is to run all gases within 15 minutes of receiving them. Thats IF they are not clotted or not on ice, requiring recollect. NICU capillary tubes are notorious for arriving clotted...argh. There are indeed many samples received in a day. Everyone thinks that THEIR patient is the most important. I do the best I can.....with what I have to work with....

Well, then welcome to the world of the lab! Forewarned is forearmed. Best of luck to you! Dont forget to keep hanging out here at allnurses. This group is the greatest! :chuckle

Also... "getting the word out" is a theme of every National Medical Laboratory Week in April. Each year we plan a grand production designed to teach the public and our co workers just what we do. The lack of interest is staggering. We sit at tables in front of colorful displays or powerpoint demos where no one stops to look. We send out press releases that are ignored or barely acknowledged. We offer tours and free cholesterol screenings, etc but these seem poorly attended. Lab work just is not glamorous! We are the black box where tubes of blood and other specimens go in and results come out the other end. Period.

As I said before, I love the job, just hate the conditions we work in. When I was younger and idealistic, I chose the path I did because I loved bio and chem and all the hands on lab work. I did NOT enjoy so much patient contact...or patient's family member interaction either, for that matter. However...after 20+ years in this field, the lack of pay increases and the low respect have taken their toll. One of my co workers calls us "plankton" because we are so vital to the food chain, yet are the lowest organism in the chain! Too true. Lab work is mostly automated now, which has stripped the field of a lot of its appeal to us science geeks. Volume testing is the only way for labs to make any money, it seems. If you read any of the laboratory science journals, you will get the same picture. No organized effort to raise the status of lab personnel. We have been under the umbrella of the ASCP, the pathologist run organization, which until recently had us as associate members! Other groups have tried to represent only MT and MLT, but are too weak to make much of a dent. Laboratory folks whom I have met (self included!) are generally low key intellectual types who avoid conflict. Most are very independent and work well on their own. We gripe a lot among ourselves, but have a great passion for what we do. That said, it takes a certain type of person to be happy in this field. If you are obsessed with details and love to study, you will thrive here. If you are using MT as a starting point for advanced graduate study, its a great place to learn. If yours is a two income family, you can get by with one person being an MT. If you dont need the benefits , you can work part time. You do have to work weekends, holidays, and all shifts. You do have to work alone a lot, which can be stressful in itself. You will be responsible for participating in life and death decisions...lab info is important stuff. Choose a career path wisely. Plan ahead, and dont get stuck somewhere for life. Thats the advice I am also giving my 17 year old daughter. :)

And another thing I work a lot of weekends and had an OR nurse tell me to "take your time with that blood...I am on double, triple overtime today" Yeah, right. I replied that "we only have ONE speed inthe Blood Bank and that is STAT" :chuckle

These days I work solely in the Blood Bank. I had an experienced nurse from Cardiovascular intensive care come to pick up blood recently...now I have worked with her for years, and she was shocked to learn that we in the Blood Bank were not nurses. grr :angryfire

Also...dont plan on getting the pay increases, overtime or bonuses nurses get. Our hospital gives periodic market adjustments to nurses, but everyone else gets a wage freeze or else a meager 3 percent cost of living with annual evaluation. Our recent range adjustment is the first I have seen in eons..and its not that fabulous. It is nice to see the attention lab work is getting lately from shows like CSI and Medical Investigation. I got interested in the field from watching the TV show Quincy years ago. Maybe with the average age of laboratory workers increasing, the lab will be seen as a vital part of health care too.

I too have been a medical technologist in Blood Bank, Chemistry, Micro and Immunology in the state of PA for over 20 years. There is a big difference in the responsibilities of the BS degree Medical Technologist and the AS degree Medical Laboratory Technician. Pay is very different also. I dont know what the MLT is, but our MT range was recently ADJUSTED to 12.50-23.00 per hour. In my opinion, the field requires way too much education and offers way too little pay. Respect for med techs is also very LOW. We know our lab tests inside and out, yet everyone wants to argue with us....for example...oh please run those umpteen test with the teeny hemolyzed drop I was able to draw...never mind that the instrument needs a certain amount to operate! Oh...yeah I know that Blood bank tubes need to be labelled, but I was in a hurry and this patient is crashing....and its the labs fault that the blood takes so long!!!! Well, you get the idea. I love the work, but hate the conditions. Know what you are getting in to before it is too late.

Good reading on the topic can be found in any of the books by Thomas Noguchi MD or Cyril Wecht MD, JD, both world famous forensic pathologists. The book MD by Benjamin Kean MD is a great autobiography of a pathologist who specializes in parasitology. He has had an amazing life. There is a series of books for teens with a main character named Jenna who works as a morgue assistant. I forget the author though!

I work there too, tho I am not a nurse. There is a lot of pressure to eliminate overtime in our department, too. In addition to Mercy Providence, they also bought up Jeanette Hospital (now called Mercy Jeanette) Could it be that we are a bit overextended??? Medicare reimbursement dropping, too many uninsured critically ill and injured ...we have a Level I trauma center and burn unit and NICU as well. Could it be time to cut out some of those services? Mercy mission is to serve the poor and underserved. I expect that if we are to survive, we will have to scale back somewhere. I foresee more outsourcing of services...hopefully not my lab, tho!!!

Norfolk region has mostly nice weather and a lot of recreation and cultural opportunities. The Atlantic coast is great, but be advised that the hurricane season can be nasty.

I am a Blood Bank technologist and have crossmatched for lots of GI bleeds, aneurysms, CABG post op, etc...but the worst bit came from the nurse in ICU after a wild night of at least 30 + products going to one GI bleed patient (who died) who THEN wanted a printout of all the products we sent so she could chart and go home....HELLO...didnt you at least keep the tags???? By then we had a full day of OR patients to type and cross...grrr. And gave us an attitude over all of this....when she was told that it would take a while to call up each unit individually....and we had no extra staff to do that immediately. Sorry...had to vent. Save a life, yes, but really....cant you have some sort of organization????

I dont care for cartoon scrubs unless the job is in peds, but I do like the celestial and animal prints. I recently got a catalog that had scrubs in a denim print...sounds interesting...probably not allowed in my hospital.

I work in a hospital laboratory and our dress code was recently changed. We used to be able to wear black jeans or khakis and any kind of shirt, but now, jeans are taboo and no t shirts at all. Reason- because they are not PROFESSIONAL. BUT...scrub clothes are OK! Really, I think scrub clothes look like pajamas. However, I went and bought a bunch of coordinating colors of scrubs and wear them all the time. Still dont see how its better than nice black jeans, but who am I to say?

Part of that hostile attitude towards folks who crow that they are going on to CRNA school is due to the impression they give that the current nursing situation is only a way station for them. I agree that it is wise to speak less, listen more. (Remember...two ears, one mouth) Learn all you can and move on with your life. Others dont need to know your plans....