Nameless and faceless.

I've touched on these topics before. but obviously no one reads my blog or cares what I say. I'm alright with that, I think. I keep reading ridiculous comments about the things that the lab does to mess with a nursing staff. I think I need to reiterate a few things.

1. Yes, we make mistakes, no we're not trying to fuck you over or do we ask you to do anything out of spite. It's just not worth it. If we get caught, we're generally not highly valued and will be replaced.

2. I can shake the ever loving crap out of a PT/PTT for a straight year, and it won't cause it to clot if the specimen was drawn correctly. Along those same lines, dropping it won't do anything either. It's not my fault you can't draw blood correctly. Reference This Post.

3. A specimen being hemolyzed isn't a bullshit excuse not to run a test. I'll remind everyone that most chemistry analyzers work on the basis of Spectrophotometry. Can we all see how a bright red color could effect results. Also, it's a good overall indicator of specimen integrity.

4. Vacutainers are made of hard plastic and don't break. We didn't break your specimen. Contrary to popular thought. It's MUCH MUCH easier for us to just run a specimen and not call and have it recollected.

5. Most chemistry analyzers run microassys that require a little more tha 100ul , Vacutainer tubes have a lip on them, if you were to somehow knock over a uncapped specimen, despite all of our automated safegaurds, they're designed to leave about 5oo ul in the tube anyway. I'd have to turn a tube upside down and shake it in order to spill all of it.

6. If something does need to be recollected because there isn't enough in it, it's probably because the first run gave us poor results, whether because of a bad stick, or because of analyzer error. that's why Sometimes you can send underfilled tubes and "cover it up with a label and we'll never know."

7. As much as I'd like to do shit to spite some of you, I can't afford to, The nursing staff is always the squeaky wheel that gets oiled. We're always the one that has to adapt to the nursing departments because you have many more employees. I've come to terms with it.

I realize that it's easy to blame the lab because we're nameless, faceless "robots idiots" and frankly I'd do the same thing if I did patient care, and I was the one that had to stick a patient again. Frankly, I'd find anyway I could to blame nameless people that make me look better, I get it, but I don't understand getting on the internet and acting like you really believe the stupid ass conspiracy theories and then spreading said theories. Oh well, maybe I should be the squeakiest wheel.