MRW I drop a screw into the instrument
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Sunquest may have a better GUI than say... Pathnet? Novius? SafeTrace?? But how does it hold up stability wise? I feel like every time I scan more than 10-15 units into Blood Product Entry at a single time the software crashes locking all previously scanned units into memory. Nothing like having to manually unlock each unit one by one. I feel like it has serious issues dealing with multiple containers of a blood product as well, that's where it really throws some shade. A SECOND CONTAINER? I CANT DEAL WITH THIS. CRASH. MUMPS. Everyone who uses Sunquest knows the mumps error...
*instrument grinds and squeals*
Why are you asking me how to do everything? Shouldn't the manager know this? How am I supposed to be provided with feedback properly on my work and performance if you don't even know what I'm doing?? You don't even know where the reagents are stored? Didn't you sign off on the SOPs???
I truly do believe that managers and those office bound techs who make important decisions should work the bench AT LEAST once a month. You lose your ability to grasp and understand the impact of the decisions you make and you lose the ability to feel what your coworkers are going through as a workflow.
It will never cease to amaze me that you have these supervisors, managers, etc., who haven't been on the bench in years, making so many decisions that affect the work of the lowly lab techs/lab scientists without ever fully realizing how the changes affect the dynamic of things. It should be a inspection regulation. A deficiency. If a supervisor or manager cannot function at a bench station. There is no excuse for that. How can you properly manage? Supervise? Correct? Improve?
You cannot.
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The best part about the complement cascade has to be the Membrane Attack Complex. If you're snoring in your seat at the beginning of the complement lecture, you'll instantly awaken with excited energy to learn about the big MAC attack. Molecular/Cell biology is amazing.
I wonder why we're getting Reagent Probe UP/DOWN errors? Those stupid sawblade twist off caps on the reagent cartridges are sometimes off center and the probe doesn't like it. Sometimes the pack will actually have to even be opened and closed manually with that fun little blue key. Sometimes...the label sticker is not on the pack properly and boy does the probe hate that as well because it won't sit in the reagent ring perfectly. Looks like this is a different issue though. The probe isn't supposed to be pointing AT me right? Did I do something wrong? Can we just take this to the laboratory smithy and have them bang this back into conformation? Good lord, I'm going to have to calibrate everything on this tonight, now. If I can even figure out how to hoop this new probe around and on...
You got a 3 course meal and diamond earrings?? And that was only Monday?! Lucky! I think the grounds crew offered to save some of the dead animals they found during construction for us to eat during lab week. How would you like us to even cook that? Sous vide in the plasma thawer? Please ask Helmer if this an off label use. Perhaps as a side dish we could wrangle up some Spotted Lantern Flies and nuke them in the Beckman. Zap Apertures for a perfectly deserved lab week delicacy.
Lab Week does occur suspiciously with the 4/20 holiday. I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist here, but it would certainly explain why we get the charcoal pizza. Char 'em if you got 'em.
What's the worst your organization has done for lab week? Does administration actually promote and provide for the laboratory at all? A FUN and EXCITING thing we do is have a potluck. Of food that we made ourselves. That we paid for by ourselves. With money that was awarded through labour at this very institution.
I always appreciate when pathology and managers dig into their own pockets to try and provide us with a little morale boost. We know hospital administration surely isn't. The lab? What is that? That costly hole in the basement? Oh right.... George do you think we can get the nurses gold bars this year?
Cubic zirconia would have even sufficed but all I get is STRUVITE. Can I wear magnesium ammonium phosphate without looking totally ridiculous? I think not. I do think Jared has a urea-splitting bacterial infection somewhere up in there that needs attending to. I'm not wearing a struvite necklace anytime soon so.... Urine diamonds are NOT a fashion statement. They're a medical emergency.
It does make me ponder the thought though... I do drink a lot of tea which can increase the chance of oxalate crystals. Maybe I can make my own crystal jewelry as well? Nephro-Zirconia. I'm not expecting to sell to Jared or Zales or anything, but maybe local pawn shops at least? For little bit of beer money?
Fun Facts:
Urea splitting bacteria contain an enzyme, urease, that cleaves urea into pieces leaving behind byproducts that include ammonia and bicarbonate. This increases the pH of the urine and produces an environment where struvite crystals can precipitate out of solution if existent. Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, and Proteus are the most common UTI bacteria that can be attributed to this.
Lab scientists generally refer to struvite's most common shape as "Coffin lids". Now there's an ASCP question! They are also present in normal healthy cats and dogs. In fact, it's the most commonly seen crystal in your pet's urine!
Learn more »Let me sprinkle some of our lab grade fertilizer onto those plates then. I'm not sure how we bill for that but here we are.
Someone should see what is affected and how things are affected by adding fertilizer to plates/agar/broth. Could we potentially create a superbug and start a new pandemic? All because of ammonium phosphate and the like?
In the future I do feel like physicians will get their way. Kind of like how "tube testing" is still the gold standard for blood bank, perhaps plate cultures will still be the gold standard for microbiology as technology continue to develop. Right now, stool cultures are being rapidly set off to the side. PCR is rearing it's head into microbiological identifications.
The BioFire Stool Panel tests for 22 separate targets, five being viruses. Let's see a routine stool culture catch that. The BioFire can find:
Campylobacter (jejuni, coli, and upsaliensis)
Clostridium difficile (toxin A/B)
Plesiomonas shigelloides
Salmonella
Yersinia enterocolitica
Vibrio (parahaemolyticus, vulnificus, and cholerae)
Vibrio cholerae
Enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC)
Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC)
Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) lt/st
Shiga-like toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) stx1/stx2
E. coli O157
Shigella/Enteroinvasive E. coli (EIEC)
Cryptosporidium
Cyclospora cayetanensis
Entamoeba histolytica
Giardia lamblia
Adenovirus F40/41
Astrovirus
Norovirus GI/GII
Rotavirus A
Sapovirus (I, II, IV, and V)
All with one sample, one cartridge, in one hour.
This study shows clinically significant findings in the case of Otitis media (ear infections). PCR specimens were much more likely to be positive for a infectious agent than traditional culture. For example, for "S. pneumonia, culture positive cases were 5, while PCR positive cases were 18 which is statistically significant difference (P < 0.001)"
With PCR, they identified a potential pathogen (bacterial or viral) in 87% of patients, compared with 39% using culture alone. Predictably, PCR detected bacteria more frequently than culture in patients who had received antibiotics (77.6% vs 32.1%).
Well maybe plate cultures won't continue to be the gold standard. Microbiology will fade away and simply get absorbed into molecular diagnostics. A future not so far off.
Masks actually keep the virus in and make you sicker! I never even met anyone who had the virus, how do we know anything??
It's crazy knowing how many people buy in conspiracy theories about things. I feel like social media's grasp on society has only made things worse.
One panel study showed that nearly 30 percent of adult Americans believed the virus was created by the Chinese government as a bioweapon. As months moved on, nearly 40 percent said they could believe this theory.
A similar portion of people said that the CDC and other agencies were exaggerating the virus for political reasons. (Yes, of course the entire world is faking COVID to try to make the American president look bad. Of COURSE)
Another common one was that COVID was created to sell medicines and vaccines. Big pharma needs more money to sleep on!!
Just look at this MASSIVE Wikipedia article that highlights all the misinformation regarding COVID-19.
Some people need to take more science classes. And an immunology class.
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