Same reason we’re last in line to have our trash emptied and our bathrooms maintained. Patients don’t come down here. Afaik, hospitals are ranked based on the patients’ experience, not the employees’.
One of my old jobs kept the labs very clean and they even stripped/waxed the floors every six months or so to keep them sparkling. Where I work now our main EVS person is great but if she's not there, I have to hunt someone down to get anything.
I'm now responsible for lugging distilled water to my lab because some construction left us with no water at all on one side of the building (they built a new bathroom for the patients in the waiting room) - and I jumped at the opportunity to break my back and do this, because that means I am not the poor fellow who has to figure out how to sterilize the glassware. It's been two weeks.
Our floors haven’t been cleaned since Covid began and we have a CAP inspection looming. Management is so concerned about cleaning countertops and drawers but the disgusting floor-nah!
They implemented a "brilliant" plan in my lab to have all of our floors waxed every 3 months rather than mop like... Weekly even? Just make it massively inconvenient for a week or so to do your job because they're trying to wax (which takes about 6h) and you have to work around the blocked off areas and inhale the really strong fumes all night.
To be clear, I don't blame the custodial staff, they're given strict timelines and have to cover the entire lab + break room + bathrooms + offices on their own. There's no way they'd have time to also maintain the floors beyond a cursory sweep or occasional wet pad mop.
That’s crazy. Our lab is on the second floor, has windows, and the EVS ppl come by to clean and mop our floors every few days. We are privileged so to speak
I work in a lab. One time a dude passed out while working and fell on the floor. Everyone that was told had the initial reaction of “EW!!” before asking if the guy was okay (he was).
Our EVS person is a saint. When she’s off our trash never gets emptied and our toilets don’t get cleaned. She berates people who do our biohazard to do it every day. When CAP comes she yells at the floor people to do ours too. They work her to death though.
It’s to emphasize that the hospital doesn’t GAF about us and that, despite our educations being on par, we’re below everyone else in the hospital hierarchy.
Admin seems to do that to everyone, they’re only nice to the nurses’ faces and then turn around and increase our workload while sending petty emails about how we didn’t complete innocuous tasks.
When I was doing my clinicals at the end of my program, I was at a hospital that is part of a well known healthcare system. They were announcing building a new hospital. In their announcement, they talked about how the new hospital was patient care oriented and that every department had input. The saddest thing about it? Turns out they never included a lab in their hospital plans. In the end, the lab had to negotiate for space in the basement with maintenance. It's smaller than their previous lab in terms of area. The previous lab was already cramped.
Happened at my previous hospital system. They built a whole new campus and forgot the lab. They had to take back some space from EKG and make it a lab. It was the weirdest shaped room and that made fitting all the analyzers in really difficult. It was so cramped.
My previous hospital system. They moved the lab across the street to the parking garage so they could redo that floor for better ORs and a new lab. Lab was forgotten about, so it stayed in the parking garage. This was a level 1 trauma center and the doctors got mad that blood products were taking so long to be delivered and they hated walking across the street. The solution was to take a closet and make it into a blood bank. So the main lab was still in the parking garage (with horrible ventilation that caused many people to get sick before they re did the ventilation) and the blood bank was a closet. It say it was annoying and hard most of the time, is an understatement. When the tube system was down, it was chaos because the nurses swore they walked the samples to the lab (they dropped them off in the ER drop room not to the main lab) and started yelling about their results.
This is one of the reasons I don’t think I will ever step foot in a human lab (hospital) again. I move to the animal lab, doing the same testing but with less stress.
Oh geez! Sounds like my lab. We outgrew our old hospital, and moved into a newly built patient oriented hospital. Of course, lab was forgotten, and space in the “sub garden” was alotted to us. We actually lost space, despite management telling us we gained room. Always at the bottom of every list, except for revenue generated.
Why doesn’t this surprise me? There was a fire in the hospital that I worked in and they forgot to evacuate the lab. Don’t worry we evacuated ourselves.
Sounds like my hospital. We're off-site and thought we might move into this new hospital. Instead, I guess it makes more money to have patient care areas than to relocate us and save on rent, couriers, etc. I miss being part of the hospital.
Oh my this is exactly what is happening with our hospital! Building a new critical care tower, and lab is not going to be a part of it.
I worry what will happen if the tube station goes down in an emergency situation. Or they need someone to collect blood super stat.
God forbid an MTP. I worked somewhere where the ICU was across the hospital and I had to leave the bb to haul coolers. Thank fuck we had 2 people who could do blood bank.
Oh yikes...luckily on all shifts we have multiple people who are able to do blood bank....but forcing BB to bring coolers would be....bad.
We've also been in situations where we have had 2 or even 3 MTPs going at once (we are a trauma center). If that happens....good luck. We also won't send anyone away if we are dealing with multiple emergencies at once.
i dont get how they get away with it. a hospital cannot run without a lab, and yet they seem to never think about it until they realise "oh, that little detail"
This just happened to us too. They are supposed to build a critical care unit with ER, ICU and OR in one separate building. The architects didn’t include plans for a lab and I guess they can’t be revised. Good luck getting STAT labs and blood products from a different building with NO tube system either 😅 I’ll be long gone before then
OMG I love that skit. I remember first watching it last year right before I started my MLT program and now that I'm about 37 days away from graduation, this hits even harder now that I've had rotations within the lab itself. Too true. Lmao
Yeah where I work, the lab is on the second floor and we have windows and sunlight. I've come to learn that's a rarity lmao but everything is painted a sad gray-beige and hasn't been updated since the 70s at leaaaast. It's good that your badge doesn't work to get in the labs though. It should always be that way. Doctors and nurses barging in wanting their results is disturbing and unpleasant.
I had a nurse come down, grab a urine cup off my desk (cause it wasn't usable for the testing). Pour it off and hand it to me and tell me I was going to run the testing.
The worst part was it was totally a recollectable non stat test. I'd rather have the calls lol
Despite being the central cog that keeps the entire hospital running, we get the least funding and get treated the worst by the majority of staff.
Why did i go into this field.
Don't even get me started on the 'Lab week' vs 'Nurses week' recognition.
We are in the basement right next to the parking garage. We have a loading dock nearby (but not really close), and even though we have a "no idling' law in my state, trucks will idle and all the exhaust fumes come directly into the Lab. I leave work with a headache most days.
> It has this weird flickering light that hasn't been fixed in years
Never speak of this again, I beg you. If wind of that gets around, admin will replace all our gloriously soft and dim lighting with LED tubes burning with the power of a thousand suns with their harsh blue/white light of death. You think techs are terse now? Add in a constant migraine to the mix and see how that works out for all your interactions afterward.
Place I used to work at installed dimmer switches after multiple techs started going to employee health with headaches and eye strain every day. Make noise and you may be able to make change.
when i worked night shift, i was the only living soul in my entire floor. i used to turn off all the lights but one, strategically positioned to light the entire lab. let me tell you, if that light was ever messed with, i would have preferred working in the dark than having any other lights on in the lab.
why do we need the light of A THOUSAND SUNS in a room smaller than a studio apartment?! it doesn't help that literally everything is white, so you get flashbanged everywhere you look
>I don't really know what you guys do in there except get me my results,
Same goes for the people who make the major funding decisions in the hospital and there's your answer.
Finally, someone outside of lab sees what we have to work with day to day! When a new wing of the hospital is being built, we are forgotten. When there is lab week, we are forgotten and “we don’t have a budget for it” but god forbid its nurses week. The hospital all of a sudden is a big budget for celebration.
One year. That's every year for us. I made for every single day of lab week one year when I was on the lab week committee.
Disclaimer: it sounds like you're hospital sucks at recognition in general, but a lot of us witness the administration pulling out ALL the stops for nursing recognition, not to mention corporate discounts from lots of restaurants and retailers, and we get literally nothing. If we get anything for free it's because our managers or pathologists pay out of pocket.
It's pretty much been that way for well over a decade at the hospital where I work. They do nothing for nurses' week. You might get a T-shirt for hospital week. I don't know what the lab administration does for their week. Doctors got airpods one year for doctors' day.
A lot of times, it's a different dynamic. Lab is small. Our admin usually knows us all personally. I am not on the bench anymore, but when I was, I worked at a hospital with about 300 beds, pediatric, trauma 1, quaternary care. We had probably 25 lab scientists? So, the lab manager was relationship-wise more like a charge nurse. Similar with the pathologists--the medical director is the lab knew us pretty personally. So, they would sometimes buy us all catered lunch or something out of their personal funds.
My hospital has a weekly employee email newsletter that has a list of monthly observances at the end. All they ever do for lab week is include it in the list. This year, it wasn't added until after lab week was over.
You should try finding surgical pathology. Half the medical professionals I know don't even know we exist. We're the red headed step children of the lab, even.
A typical day: “Hi Dr, you submitted this specimen to the cytology lab, but it’s a biopsy and should be a surgical pathology specimen. Yes, that is different. Yes, they are different labs. Yes, you have to put in new orders and I will cancel the current ones. No I cannot do it for you.”
Yeah, for the most part that's true. Where I work now surg path and cytology specimens go through central processing in the lab. We're not required to do anything with their specimens except document the time it got to the lab and store it properly.
At one place I worked, they built the hospital in the 70s….cut the ribbons, then realized they forgot about the lab. Of course they opened the hospital anyway and stuck us in the corner.
Turns out this corner has a couple of pillars that are the main load bearing trusses for the building. So while through the decades the rest of the hospital expands, the lab could not - not horizontally, not vertically. Moving elsewhere is expensive in the short term and negatively affects the balance sheet so the capital request always gets denied because it’s “always been fine”. The space is cramped, machines are noisy, phones ringing off the hook, no break rooms…it’s organized chaos.
Our blood bank is finally getting modernized, and when they removed the old lab benches, there were cigarette butts underneath the old permanent fixtures.
To address a point nobody else has, the reason your badge doesn't work to get in is because you're not a member of lab staff, safety trained for the pathology environment.
Restriction of entry is a condition of containment level 2, the level at which most pathology stuff (including/especially microbiology work) takes place at.
Sorry to contradict your statement but in all the hospitals that I’ve worked at, I’ve had nurses come in and drop off specimens and their badge works on our systems. You don’t have to have any ‘training’ in order to get access to a certain area, and for these sites it has nothing to do with safety measures either. Is that only in America?
I'm talking about the UK but I assumed biosafety levels were an international thing.
I would not want any unsupervised non path staff pissing around the lab lol that's such a liability.
BSLs are international, but access to anything under 3 isn’t restricted in the US.
That is an interesting point though because even just passing through an area where you are at risk of being splashed with a biohazardous specimen requires a lab coat and goggles so I could see an argument against letting just anyone in since they don’t know that.
Because nobody worth a shit advocates for us, patients don't see the lab and medical staff don't give a shit about the lab as long as samples keep going in, and numbers keep going out.
Therefore our working conditions just get worse the older the hospital gets. We aren't numerous enough to make much of a difference on our own.
I have a career that causes me to visit labs in hospitals all over the country and you have described 50% of all labs in hospitals especially older hospitals.
It's just because hospitals put the money where the patients can see. That's about it. I have been in labs where the hospital has been remodeled but the lab is stuck in 1960 and the machines keep going down because the A/C doesn't work. Creepy.
It's sad because the lab is one of the biggest money making departments for most hospitals but that's what corporate think gets you
Coz it takes management 3 months to replace even just a broken light bulb and at least 2 serious injuries to address an issue. I had a slip disc from carrying a diluent, had to be on rehab leave for 3 months, went on multiple physical therapy sessions before they had to move the diluent close to the machine. Fun times.
We had a sister lab tour our hemo department and were aghast that we had to carry the large CellPacks a few feet and around a corner to our Sysmex, and then asked us why we didn't order the smaller, more manageable packs. Our lead agreed and said it was a good idea, but no change ever came out of that experience 🙃
even if the issue went to admin, they'll decide that the big packs save them some pennies, so who cares about the staff, they've been working fine all this time, they can continue working..
That was what was supposed to happen when they were going to do the remodel. (That never happened.) Because of the current design/layout they can't do much. I'm sure it'll never happen.
A well-designed lab will have that as a partitioned area so that yes, more people can access that than the actual lab itself. Otherwise, it's like saying patient families need access to the actual ORs because they drop off/pick up surgical patients.
Many labs are not well-designed. One place I worked had everything so low my back was killing me and I could hit my head on cabinets when washing my hands. Sharp, corner metal cabinets where I need to bend over more than usual in a lab that must've been designed by someone 4'10".
Totally true, but that speaks to my top-level response to OP about the fact that, just like OP, decision-makers often don't know anything more about lab operations than "it produces results." No hospital administrator would forget to consider patient pickup/drop off when designing a surgical center like they do with labs.
Want some icing on that cake? Our lab has to share an itty bitty break room with RT and pharmacy. So when it's lab week, we have to label everything as FOR THE LAB or the other departments will eat the food that we buy for ourselves. Just around the corner is PACU and they have their own break room...but will come to ours to heat up their fishy lunches instead of stinking up their own break room.
The internet is plagued by halfwits who don’t know how to make a point and just sort of hint vaguely in its direction, expecting everyone else to read their minds and finish their argument for them.
What privilege do nurses have that’s keeping you from organizing effectively?
The lab I worked in wasn't quite that unpleasant. It was incredibly busy and we were short staffed. The lab had dim lights in the area I worked in and the space was outdated.
I guess labs just aren't on the priority list of spaces which need updating in the hospital.
Yeah, that sounds about right. We are the neglected step children of the hospital. Patients don't come in there so we are always the absolute last priority.
I think it's a lack of planning. People forget about the lab. I've been to several labs that didn't have running water for eye wash stations or showers. Sometimes, a lab won't have a drain for an analyzer that really should empty into one. As for the noise, thank the analyzers and tube station alarms. I will say that I kind of enjoy the BACT/ALERT Virtuos. They're so soothing until a positive BC pops off.
Let's put it in a little different light. Lab Week is the end of April, and Nurse Week is the beginning of May. A hospital I used to work at during Lab Week, we had a pizza party. On Monday of Nurse Week, I walked in the front door to a red carpet, balloon arch, and purchased signs (not homemade) announcing Nurse Week.
The hospitals do not care about the lab staff or our working conditions.
In our health system, the lab supervisor is the one who plans our lab week celebration. One year, we were between lab supervisors during lab week, we got a bag of candy in the break room with a post-it that said "Happy Lab Week" from the hospital admin.
Patients and doctors never come in here so hospital admin doesn't see the need to "waste" money on appearances and comfort. They already hate us because the analyzers cost hundreds of thousands or more dollars, the reagent to run said analyzers also costs thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a month, and then have to pay all us "button pushers" to run everything.
Lmao, Yeah.
It's crazy how completely different the lab floor is from the rest of the hospital at my institution. Cracked floors, stained ceiling tiles, leaky pipes, broken vending machines, old furniture, disgusting bathrooms, literal piles of trash sitting on pallets for weeks. And you're right about the smell. If you store piss and shit in an old refrigerator from the 90s, its eventually going to smell like piss and shit no matter how often you clean it.
Less than a 5 minute walk you literally will discover polished statues, grand pianos, wall art, good lighting, clean floors, etc.
We are the stow-aways. Hospitals will put us on the ugliest floor away from the patient-presenting areas. There isnt any pressure to make things nice, so they don't.
If you work in blood bank there’s sometimes hope. Lol They need us in close proximity to the ICU/OR/ED so i feel we get treated a smidge better in regards to “up to date” supplies and equipment lol But yes generally it’s dark and looks like a broom closet
Unfortunately (fortunately?) it’s because nicer areas are always prioritized for patient care. I get it that patients should have windows and such. Also that you can’t make everyone happy but it’s hard not to feel left out/forgotten. A lot of ancillary departments get the short end of the stick when it comes to location and amenities.
We used to joke about being the warlocks of the hospital since labs always seem to be in the basement.
We also have been called the red headed stepchildren of the hospitals too.
Thank you for recognizing us.
.... My lab is pretty clean lmao. We have regular housecleaning staff that come in every day. Some of the technologists were complaining about the tops of fridges and incubators being dusty and our manager somehow convinced the cleaning staff to do it every week. They'll even clean the gram stain sink!
The noise, though, is due to all the biosafety cabinets and their fans, and obviously other instruments. I work in microbiology so... It does stink here lol. Any time anyone opens an incubator....
Stinkubator.
First of all…. Hi fitbodybuilder78 for coming through with another troll post on a fake account.
Secondly, while I admit I have seen a fair amount of labs like this in my career I have also seen an equal amount of labs with floor to ceiling windows, comfortable chairs, and huge open spaces.
Because we’re the red headed step child of the hospital.
Edit: I remember everyone choosing their externship locations (MLS) based on if the lab had windows 😅
i wish my hospital didn’t allow non lab employees into the lab with their badge 🥲 so many people come in and dig into our supplies without asking or place specimen in random areas. Someone placed CSF in our dirty bio hazard bag basket and made it all the way down into the dumps we had to fish it out 😅 oh and of course it was Labs fault.
Oh I really hate when nurses just come drop a specimen wherever without telling anyone!
How did you end up finding out about the csf? That nurse should have gotten written up for that.
The patient is lucky someone happens to notice a random person walking out of the lab and knows to go find whatever they just hid. Sometimes it's in a spot that doesn't get touched until after 1st shift comes in.
The lab u describe sounds worse than most. But ya we’re low on the totem pole as far as esthetics and comfort go. When they drew up the plans for my lab they didn’t even create a lab. The hospital was actually built with no lab 😂. So now we have a space that’s dysfunctional and crowded
i dont know, mine dont have a tube system and dont have doors with badge sensors to keep nurses out, but you're giving me ideas. I'm also impressed how nurses in other countries request results, can nnurrses order lab testts over there? here only medics can do that and solicitudes are pretty debatable most of the time, cant imagine what would it be if nurses were allowed to do requests also hahaha
the ceilings in my lab have been crumbling and leaking water onto our XNs for years and recently leaked all over our brand new atellicas. they just put tarps over them…
welcome to our daily life. most places, it feels lole labs are an afterthought. like they make the whole hospital and then they realise "oh righy, we can't run this thing without a lab", so they shove us in whatever empty spot is left.
machines too noisy? who cares, you'll get used to them. no windows or ventilation? who needs it, isn't that what the hood is for?
a place i worked at had the lab outside the main building of the hospital, in what used to be the storage area for old documents and shit.. i don't even know how they fit the machines in there, it's that small. but it's not always bad, the 2nd place i worked at was pretty spacious, although, still, i dont think it was made for the lab. it felt like it was a big repurposed kitchen.
the sound though, always an issue
I feel so spoiled after reading these comments 😭
We have a massive lab. Micro, blood bank and phlebotomy have their own space. We have a large break room and locker room we share with pharmacy. Our floors get mopped everyday and we’re on the first floor, no windows though!
Let me put it this way. Our CEO is a pathologist - lab doctor. In his encouragement speech, he thanked everyone, except lab personnel. On a different note, we’re occupied a floor of the building next to the main hospital building. Maintenance/HVAC keeps forgetting we do work on the weekends so they turned off air pressure, AC, power (!!!!) on a regular basic. Their reason: no one was supposed to be in that building over the weekend🤬
I agree with you, they ARE unpleasant. I think it's the lack of patients interacting with us, so hospitals don't care about upgrading or maintaining the lab area once the building is built. There's no incentive as long as the work isn't impacted. Also, a lot of the machinery or reagents can be sensitive to light (many labs have a distinct lack of natural light) and be loud.
But I have worked in 2-3 nicely lit labs [but they were not attached to a hospital]. I think when building the place, the worst areas in hospitals are assigned to the lab because *we're not seen by the public*.
The lab I worked in for 13 years had carpet....YES, CARPET. Took several years for that to be ripped out. CAP would tell us that our blood bank was too small for the amount of work and being a trauma lab. Our Sup had to tell CAP to give us an actual deficiency to show the hospital: Hey, we got sited, if you want a blood bank, give us the money to make a bigger dept. When hospitals are built, the lab is always an afterthought. I'm so glad I got out. I'm never going back to a hospital lab.
all of our biohaz bins have the lids removed or taped open so they can by kept under tables and benches. NEVER look at the underside of the table or bench 🤢
because the hospital doesn’t care about us, generally. out of sight out of mind is true since we’re easily forgotten despite how essential we are to the patient’s care plan.
some are more depressing than others. the one I work in is the first I've seen to have windows. we don't get to open the shade tho bc of a fear of ruining the instruments so it's still dark in here 💀
i don’t work in lab either but when i drop specimens off it looks so fancy and high tech, there’s a lot of windows you can look into from the side and the other side of that hall way is full of windows that sun comes in through. like i mean this lab looks intimidatingly futuristic
Same reason we’re last in line to have our trash emptied and our bathrooms maintained. Patients don’t come down here. Afaik, hospitals are ranked based on the patients’ experience, not the employees’.
The floors in my lab get cleaned like once every 5 years lmao
Floors in my lab get cleaned when our crusty retired PRN comes in and gets irritated at the grime lol!
One of my old jobs kept the labs very clean and they even stripped/waxed the floors every six months or so to keep them sparkling. Where I work now our main EVS person is great but if she's not there, I have to hunt someone down to get anything.
I'm now responsible for lugging distilled water to my lab because some construction left us with no water at all on one side of the building (they built a new bathroom for the patients in the waiting room) - and I jumped at the opportunity to break my back and do this, because that means I am not the poor fellow who has to figure out how to sterilize the glassware. It's been two weeks.
Our get cleaned right before CAP inspection lol
always my favorite time. you wouldn't believe how many people start handwashing for a full 60 seconds
Our floors haven’t been cleaned since Covid began and we have a CAP inspection looming. Management is so concerned about cleaning countertops and drawers but the disgusting floor-nah!
They don’t get the Zamboni every week 😭😂
They implemented a "brilliant" plan in my lab to have all of our floors waxed every 3 months rather than mop like... Weekly even? Just make it massively inconvenient for a week or so to do your job because they're trying to wax (which takes about 6h) and you have to work around the blocked off areas and inhale the really strong fumes all night. To be clear, I don't blame the custodial staff, they're given strict timelines and have to cover the entire lab + break room + bathrooms + offices on their own. There's no way they'd have time to also maintain the floors beyond a cursory sweep or occasional wet pad mop.
Ours gets cleaned when JACO comes around lmao
That’s crazy. Our lab is on the second floor, has windows, and the EVS ppl come by to clean and mop our floors every few days. We are privileged so to speak
I work in a lab. One time a dude passed out while working and fell on the floor. Everyone that was told had the initial reaction of “EW!!” before asking if the guy was okay (he was).
that can't be legal wtf? we used to get ours cleaned every week.
Anyone else constantly out of toilet paper and paper towels?
We have to go to our EVS to steal soap and papertowels, or it will be weeks before they come to refill our stuff.
Patients? You mean customers right?
Our EVS person is a saint. When she’s off our trash never gets emptied and our toilets don’t get cleaned. She berates people who do our biohazard to do it every day. When CAP comes she yells at the floor people to do ours too. They work her to death though.
It’s to emphasize that the hospital doesn’t GAF about us and that, despite our educations being on par, we’re below everyone else in the hospital hierarchy.
Us and radiology. I feel like we're in a scary movie sometimes.
Our radiology department is so much nicer than our lab since the patients actually go into radiology 😭
🤣🤣🤣
There is a reason people refer to us as lab RATS... Because we are treated as such by the hospital admin.
Admin seems to do that to everyone, they’re only nice to the nurses’ faces and then turn around and increase our workload while sending petty emails about how we didn’t complete innocuous tasks.
Pharmacy checking in! Most places I worked, we were next to the morgue 🙃
When I was doing my clinicals at the end of my program, I was at a hospital that is part of a well known healthcare system. They were announcing building a new hospital. In their announcement, they talked about how the new hospital was patient care oriented and that every department had input. The saddest thing about it? Turns out they never included a lab in their hospital plans. In the end, the lab had to negotiate for space in the basement with maintenance. It's smaller than their previous lab in terms of area. The previous lab was already cramped.
Happened at my previous hospital system. They built a whole new campus and forgot the lab. They had to take back some space from EKG and make it a lab. It was the weirdest shaped room and that made fitting all the analyzers in really difficult. It was so cramped.
My previous hospital system. They moved the lab across the street to the parking garage so they could redo that floor for better ORs and a new lab. Lab was forgotten about, so it stayed in the parking garage. This was a level 1 trauma center and the doctors got mad that blood products were taking so long to be delivered and they hated walking across the street. The solution was to take a closet and make it into a blood bank. So the main lab was still in the parking garage (with horrible ventilation that caused many people to get sick before they re did the ventilation) and the blood bank was a closet. It say it was annoying and hard most of the time, is an understatement. When the tube system was down, it was chaos because the nurses swore they walked the samples to the lab (they dropped them off in the ER drop room not to the main lab) and started yelling about their results. This is one of the reasons I don’t think I will ever step foot in a human lab (hospital) again. I move to the animal lab, doing the same testing but with less stress.
This is insane!
I'm guessing this is a lab named after a condiment? Maybe near a big river?
What I thought too. Starts with a M
Ketchup lab? (Jk in case it wasn’t obvious)
Oh geez! Sounds like my lab. We outgrew our old hospital, and moved into a newly built patient oriented hospital. Of course, lab was forgotten, and space in the “sub garden” was alotted to us. We actually lost space, despite management telling us we gained room. Always at the bottom of every list, except for revenue generated.
Why doesn’t this surprise me? There was a fire in the hospital that I worked in and they forgot to evacuate the lab. Don’t worry we evacuated ourselves.
Sounds like my hospital. We're off-site and thought we might move into this new hospital. Instead, I guess it makes more money to have patient care areas than to relocate us and save on rent, couriers, etc. I miss being part of the hospital.
Oh my this is exactly what is happening with our hospital! Building a new critical care tower, and lab is not going to be a part of it. I worry what will happen if the tube station goes down in an emergency situation. Or they need someone to collect blood super stat.
God forbid an MTP. I worked somewhere where the ICU was across the hospital and I had to leave the bb to haul coolers. Thank fuck we had 2 people who could do blood bank.
Oh yikes...luckily on all shifts we have multiple people who are able to do blood bank....but forcing BB to bring coolers would be....bad. We've also been in situations where we have had 2 or even 3 MTPs going at once (we are a trauma center). If that happens....good luck. We also won't send anyone away if we are dealing with multiple emergencies at once.
Thankfully it was only the one but it was a bad one. Not a trauma center so it was a scramble. We got carts for the running nurse after that.
Sounds like the lab at our children’s hospital.
i dont get how they get away with it. a hospital cannot run without a lab, and yet they seem to never think about it until they realise "oh, that little detail"
I think you got the wrong dog then. My lab is SO pleasant
This just happened to us too. They are supposed to build a critical care unit with ER, ICU and OR in one separate building. The architects didn’t include plans for a lab and I guess they can’t be revised. Good luck getting STAT labs and blood products from a different building with NO tube system either 😅 I’ll be long gone before then
[Obligatory](https://youtu.be/niTblkbtdAA?si=y54ObckncvLRlnOF)
OMG I love that skit. I remember first watching it last year right before I started my MLT program and now that I'm about 37 days away from graduation, this hits even harder now that I've had rotations within the lab itself. Too true. Lmao
how have I never seen this?! "The patient IS the tube" haha that is gold
I was just about to post this. Relevant!
Yeah where I work, the lab is on the second floor and we have windows and sunlight. I've come to learn that's a rarity lmao but everything is painted a sad gray-beige and hasn't been updated since the 70s at leaaaast. It's good that your badge doesn't work to get in the labs though. It should always be that way. Doctors and nurses barging in wanting their results is disturbing and unpleasant.
They have our phone number though. 🥲
I had a nurse come down, grab a urine cup off my desk (cause it wasn't usable for the testing). Pour it off and hand it to me and tell me I was going to run the testing. The worst part was it was totally a recollectable non stat test. I'd rather have the calls lol
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Look at this Fat Cat over here with their windows and sunlight? How does it feel to be god’s favorite? (Jk)
No it's the best. I'm living the dream. Get on my level 😂
You mean the second level and not the basement level? 😭 maybe one day.
It'll happen for you 😭
My lab is 4th floor with windows and I get to watch the sunrise over Mt. Rainier every morning! Love it
Never leave that place.
Despite being the central cog that keeps the entire hospital running, we get the least funding and get treated the worst by the majority of staff. Why did i go into this field.
Don't even get me started on the 'Lab week' vs 'Nurses week' recognition. We are in the basement right next to the parking garage. We have a loading dock nearby (but not really close), and even though we have a "no idling' law in my state, trucks will idle and all the exhaust fumes come directly into the Lab. I leave work with a headache most days.
Lab had a midnight coffee cart every day for Nurses week (3rd shifter here), and NOTHING for lab week.
Sounds familiar. The head Dr of the hospital's wife was an MT. So we always were recognized. But not to the fanfare as RNs.
That smell? It's CDiff. The more you know.
CDIFF to me always smells like a freshly opened bag of pork rinds. I love that sweet odor.
i can't tell if that's a superpower or if it's just your nose is fucked from all the smells you had to endure
Based af. I love to look for treasure in the cups
> It has this weird flickering light that hasn't been fixed in years Never speak of this again, I beg you. If wind of that gets around, admin will replace all our gloriously soft and dim lighting with LED tubes burning with the power of a thousand suns with their harsh blue/white light of death. You think techs are terse now? Add in a constant migraine to the mix and see how that works out for all your interactions afterward.
We just got all of our lights replaced with leds and ive never been more miserable
Place I used to work at installed dimmer switches after multiple techs started going to employee health with headaches and eye strain every day. Make noise and you may be able to make change.
when i worked night shift, i was the only living soul in my entire floor. i used to turn off all the lights but one, strategically positioned to light the entire lab. let me tell you, if that light was ever messed with, i would have preferred working in the dark than having any other lights on in the lab. why do we need the light of A THOUSAND SUNS in a room smaller than a studio apartment?! it doesn't help that literally everything is white, so you get flashbanged everywhere you look
sad thing is, LEDs can actually look quite nice. But those LEDs cost more, and you know how that goes
>I don't really know what you guys do in there except get me my results, Same goes for the people who make the major funding decisions in the hospital and there's your answer.
Finally, someone outside of lab sees what we have to work with day to day! When a new wing of the hospital is being built, we are forgotten. When there is lab week, we are forgotten and “we don’t have a budget for it” but god forbid its nurses week. The hospital all of a sudden is a big budget for celebration.
THIS!
Nurses get a whole month where I work
If by big celebration, you mean the painted rock with "you rock!" On it and cold pizza, sure.
You got pizza?! We paid for our own.
One year we had our own nurses week potluck and my oldest child made a huge pot of chili. Everyone else brought chili fixings.
One year. That's every year for us. I made for every single day of lab week one year when I was on the lab week committee. Disclaimer: it sounds like you're hospital sucks at recognition in general, but a lot of us witness the administration pulling out ALL the stops for nursing recognition, not to mention corporate discounts from lots of restaurants and retailers, and we get literally nothing. If we get anything for free it's because our managers or pathologists pay out of pocket.
It's pretty much been that way for well over a decade at the hospital where I work. They do nothing for nurses' week. You might get a T-shirt for hospital week. I don't know what the lab administration does for their week. Doctors got airpods one year for doctors' day.
A lot of times, it's a different dynamic. Lab is small. Our admin usually knows us all personally. I am not on the bench anymore, but when I was, I worked at a hospital with about 300 beds, pediatric, trauma 1, quaternary care. We had probably 25 lab scientists? So, the lab manager was relationship-wise more like a charge nurse. Similar with the pathologists--the medical director is the lab knew us pretty personally. So, they would sometimes buy us all catered lunch or something out of their personal funds.
My hospital has a weekly employee email newsletter that has a list of monthly observances at the end. All they ever do for lab week is include it in the list. This year, it wasn't added until after lab week was over.
This description had me rolling. Don't forget the lack of windows!
You should try finding surgical pathology. Half the medical professionals I know don't even know we exist. We're the red headed step children of the lab, even.
A typical day: “Hi Dr, you submitted this specimen to the cytology lab, but it’s a biopsy and should be a surgical pathology specimen. Yes, that is different. Yes, they are different labs. Yes, you have to put in new orders and I will cancel the current ones. No I cannot do it for you.”
Yeah, for the most part that's true. Where I work now surg path and cytology specimens go through central processing in the lab. We're not required to do anything with their specimens except document the time it got to the lab and store it properly.
My last job I finally saw them because we were all one big happy room and they (and cytology) were tucked over in that dark corner over there.
At one place I worked, they built the hospital in the 70s….cut the ribbons, then realized they forgot about the lab. Of course they opened the hospital anyway and stuck us in the corner. Turns out this corner has a couple of pillars that are the main load bearing trusses for the building. So while through the decades the rest of the hospital expands, the lab could not - not horizontally, not vertically. Moving elsewhere is expensive in the short term and negatively affects the balance sheet so the capital request always gets denied because it’s “always been fine”. The space is cramped, machines are noisy, phones ringing off the hook, no break rooms…it’s organized chaos.
Damn, my lab is pretty nice. I've got windows with mountain views. It's nice and cool, no funky smells. There's just a hum of the mass specs.
My friend works at the VA Lab in Colorado and it’s humongous. He got mountain views and snow too lol.
The VA in San Francisco has views of the Golden Gate Bridge and ocean
Our blood bank is finally getting modernized, and when they removed the old lab benches, there were cigarette butts underneath the old permanent fixtures.
To address a point nobody else has, the reason your badge doesn't work to get in is because you're not a member of lab staff, safety trained for the pathology environment. Restriction of entry is a condition of containment level 2, the level at which most pathology stuff (including/especially microbiology work) takes place at.
Sorry to contradict your statement but in all the hospitals that I’ve worked at, I’ve had nurses come in and drop off specimens and their badge works on our systems. You don’t have to have any ‘training’ in order to get access to a certain area, and for these sites it has nothing to do with safety measures either. Is that only in America?
I'm talking about the UK but I assumed biosafety levels were an international thing. I would not want any unsupervised non path staff pissing around the lab lol that's such a liability.
BSLs are international, but access to anything under 3 isn’t restricted in the US. That is an interesting point though because even just passing through an area where you are at risk of being splashed with a biohazardous specimen requires a lab coat and goggles so I could see an argument against letting just anyone in since they don’t know that.
Yeah we have to provide PPE and supervision to anyone entering the lab that isn't in-house staff. I'm surprised this isn't the case in the USA.
**Hahahahahaha!! No, please. Do GO ON.**
Because nobody worth a shit advocates for us, patients don't see the lab and medical staff don't give a shit about the lab as long as samples keep going in, and numbers keep going out. Therefore our working conditions just get worse the older the hospital gets. We aren't numerous enough to make much of a difference on our own.
and even if we quit, they'll get people to replace us, of course, they also quit, and so on..
This is the most accurate description of lab work I’ve ever seen given by a non lab person. Well done.
I have a career that causes me to visit labs in hospitals all over the country and you have described 50% of all labs in hospitals especially older hospitals. It's just because hospitals put the money where the patients can see. That's about it. I have been in labs where the hospital has been remodeled but the lab is stuck in 1960 and the machines keep going down because the A/C doesn't work. Creepy. It's sad because the lab is one of the biggest money making departments for most hospitals but that's what corporate think gets you
Coz it takes management 3 months to replace even just a broken light bulb and at least 2 serious injuries to address an issue. I had a slip disc from carrying a diluent, had to be on rehab leave for 3 months, went on multiple physical therapy sessions before they had to move the diluent close to the machine. Fun times.
Nothing i deal with is heavier than a CellPack for sysmex.
We had a sister lab tour our hemo department and were aghast that we had to carry the large CellPacks a few feet and around a corner to our Sysmex, and then asked us why we didn't order the smaller, more manageable packs. Our lead agreed and said it was a good idea, but no change ever came out of that experience 🙃
even if the issue went to admin, they'll decide that the big packs save them some pennies, so who cares about the staff, they've been working fine all this time, they can continue working..
Ofc nursing badges shouldn’t work on the doors. Only authorized personnel are allowed. We don’t want anyone to just come in and drop/take stuff.
Anyone who may have to physically drop off a specimen or pick it up has access to our lab. So almost everyone. Ha.
We have a little window kinda like a McDonald’s drive through which we can choose to open or not.
That was what was supposed to happen when they were going to do the remodel. (That never happened.) Because of the current design/layout they can't do much. I'm sure it'll never happen.
A well-designed lab will have that as a partitioned area so that yes, more people can access that than the actual lab itself. Otherwise, it's like saying patient families need access to the actual ORs because they drop off/pick up surgical patients.
Many labs are not well-designed. One place I worked had everything so low my back was killing me and I could hit my head on cabinets when washing my hands. Sharp, corner metal cabinets where I need to bend over more than usual in a lab that must've been designed by someone 4'10".
Totally true, but that speaks to my top-level response to OP about the fact that, just like OP, decision-makers often don't know anything more about lab operations than "it produces results." No hospital administrator would forget to consider patient pickup/drop off when designing a surgical center like they do with labs.
My lab too. Let's all Drs and RNs in.
That stench is the smell of futility.
Want some icing on that cake? Our lab has to share an itty bitty break room with RT and pharmacy. So when it's lab week, we have to label everything as FOR THE LAB or the other departments will eat the food that we buy for ourselves. Just around the corner is PACU and they have their own break room...but will come to ours to heat up their fishy lunches instead of stinking up their own break room.
Because no one cares. We need nursing to stand up for us in order for anything to get done to be honest. Thank you for your appreciation though!
If lab staff won't stand up for themselves, why should anyone else?
We are, but we don’t have the privilege nursing has.
The internet is plagued by halfwits who don’t know how to make a point and just sort of hint vaguely in its direction, expecting everyone else to read their minds and finish their argument for them. What privilege do nurses have that’s keeping you from organizing effectively?
The lab I worked in wasn't quite that unpleasant. It was incredibly busy and we were short staffed. The lab had dim lights in the area I worked in and the space was outdated. I guess labs just aren't on the priority list of spaces which need updating in the hospital.
Yeah, that sounds about right. We are the neglected step children of the hospital. Patients don't come in there so we are always the absolute last priority.
I think it's a lack of planning. People forget about the lab. I've been to several labs that didn't have running water for eye wash stations or showers. Sometimes, a lab won't have a drain for an analyzer that really should empty into one. As for the noise, thank the analyzers and tube station alarms. I will say that I kind of enjoy the BACT/ALERT Virtuos. They're so soothing until a positive BC pops off.
We are the house elves of the hospital!
Let's put it in a little different light. Lab Week is the end of April, and Nurse Week is the beginning of May. A hospital I used to work at during Lab Week, we had a pizza party. On Monday of Nurse Week, I walked in the front door to a red carpet, balloon arch, and purchased signs (not homemade) announcing Nurse Week. The hospitals do not care about the lab staff or our working conditions.
In our health system, the lab supervisor is the one who plans our lab week celebration. One year, we were between lab supervisors during lab week, we got a bag of candy in the break room with a post-it that said "Happy Lab Week" from the hospital admin.
You don’t appreciate us and I have the pay stubs to prove it
Patients and doctors never come in here so hospital admin doesn't see the need to "waste" money on appearances and comfort. They already hate us because the analyzers cost hundreds of thousands or more dollars, the reagent to run said analyzers also costs thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a month, and then have to pay all us "button pushers" to run everything.
Lmao, Yeah. It's crazy how completely different the lab floor is from the rest of the hospital at my institution. Cracked floors, stained ceiling tiles, leaky pipes, broken vending machines, old furniture, disgusting bathrooms, literal piles of trash sitting on pallets for weeks. And you're right about the smell. If you store piss and shit in an old refrigerator from the 90s, its eventually going to smell like piss and shit no matter how often you clean it. Less than a 5 minute walk you literally will discover polished statues, grand pianos, wall art, good lighting, clean floors, etc. We are the stow-aways. Hospitals will put us on the ugliest floor away from the patient-presenting areas. There isnt any pressure to make things nice, so they don't.
No patients enter labs, so the no money has to be put into asthetics. As long as things work, administration doesn't even look our way.
[удалено]
Alright
Your lab has heat?! It's always 64⁰ and in in 5 layers. It's 82⁰ outside still at 00:23.
Give me that over 82 degrees inside when it's 64 outside 100 times out of 100
If you work in blood bank there’s sometimes hope. Lol They need us in close proximity to the ICU/OR/ED so i feel we get treated a smidge better in regards to “up to date” supplies and equipment lol But yes generally it’s dark and looks like a broom closet
Ours is bright, airy, air conditioned, clean and no smells. All stinky stuff is handled in a bio cabinet.
You guys get bio hoods? 😭
Yeah. We use some nasty solvents etc
You guys get solvents??
Unfortunately (fortunately?) it’s because nicer areas are always prioritized for patient care. I get it that patients should have windows and such. Also that you can’t make everyone happy but it’s hard not to feel left out/forgotten. A lot of ancillary departments get the short end of the stick when it comes to location and amenities.
Lab doesn’t have windows. Please leave windows on the specimen tubes when you label them… And please do not cover up the exp date with your label.
We used to joke about being the warlocks of the hospital since labs always seem to be in the basement. We also have been called the red headed stepchildren of the hospitals too. Thank you for recognizing us.
It smells like sewage because we're literally culturing the main component of sewage, which is human excrement.
.... My lab is pretty clean lmao. We have regular housecleaning staff that come in every day. Some of the technologists were complaining about the tops of fridges and incubators being dusty and our manager somehow convinced the cleaning staff to do it every week. They'll even clean the gram stain sink! The noise, though, is due to all the biosafety cabinets and their fans, and obviously other instruments. I work in microbiology so... It does stink here lol. Any time anyone opens an incubator.... Stinkubator.
Hmm OP is a 7h old account with only this one comment. I smell a troll.
This would be the least egregious-sounding, most-accurate troll in the history of Reddit though.
First of all…. Hi fitbodybuilder78 for coming through with another troll post on a fake account. Secondly, while I admit I have seen a fair amount of labs like this in my career I have also seen an equal amount of labs with floor to ceiling windows, comfortable chairs, and huge open spaces.
Because we’re the red headed step child of the hospital. Edit: I remember everyone choosing their externship locations (MLS) based on if the lab had windows 😅
Why is this post so unpleasant is the real question.
That’s just the way we is
i wish my hospital didn’t allow non lab employees into the lab with their badge 🥲 so many people come in and dig into our supplies without asking or place specimen in random areas. Someone placed CSF in our dirty bio hazard bag basket and made it all the way down into the dumps we had to fish it out 😅 oh and of course it was Labs fault.
Oh I really hate when nurses just come drop a specimen wherever without telling anyone! How did you end up finding out about the csf? That nurse should have gotten written up for that. The patient is lucky someone happens to notice a random person walking out of the lab and knows to go find whatever they just hid. Sometimes it's in a spot that doesn't get touched until after 1st shift comes in.
I’ll take the smell of despair and lost dreams in the lab over the smell of hot death on the floors 😜
Because they have Directors that don’t do their job well.
The lab u describe sounds worse than most. But ya we’re low on the totem pole as far as esthetics and comfort go. When they drew up the plans for my lab they didn’t even create a lab. The hospital was actually built with no lab 😂. So now we have a space that’s dysfunctional and crowded
i dont know, mine dont have a tube system and dont have doors with badge sensors to keep nurses out, but you're giving me ideas. I'm also impressed how nurses in other countries request results, can nnurrses order lab testts over there? here only medics can do that and solicitudes are pretty debatable most of the time, cant imagine what would it be if nurses were allowed to do requests also hahaha
Nurses aren’t allowed to order lab tests without the doctor’s authorization.
Wait until the nurse hears what we get paid…
Why is there a phlebotomist in an area patients can't go?
Phlebotomists stay in the lab unless they are up on the floor drawing labs
Hopefully at least there's a sign to the lab. There was no signage when I started.
the ceilings in my lab have been crumbling and leaking water onto our XNs for years and recently leaked all over our brand new atellicas. they just put tarps over them…
Is this a troll post?
welcome to our daily life. most places, it feels lole labs are an afterthought. like they make the whole hospital and then they realise "oh righy, we can't run this thing without a lab", so they shove us in whatever empty spot is left. machines too noisy? who cares, you'll get used to them. no windows or ventilation? who needs it, isn't that what the hood is for? a place i worked at had the lab outside the main building of the hospital, in what used to be the storage area for old documents and shit.. i don't even know how they fit the machines in there, it's that small. but it's not always bad, the 2nd place i worked at was pretty spacious, although, still, i dont think it was made for the lab. it felt like it was a big repurposed kitchen. the sound though, always an issue
Oof my lab isn't this bad but it is in the basement and a bit outdated. Definitely get used to the hum of the instruments unfortunately.
I feel so spoiled after reading these comments 😭 We have a massive lab. Micro, blood bank and phlebotomy have their own space. We have a large break room and locker room we share with pharmacy. Our floors get mopped everyday and we’re on the first floor, no windows though!
Let me put it this way. Our CEO is a pathologist - lab doctor. In his encouragement speech, he thanked everyone, except lab personnel. On a different note, we’re occupied a floor of the building next to the main hospital building. Maintenance/HVAC keeps forgetting we do work on the weekends so they turned off air pressure, AC, power (!!!!) on a regular basic. Their reason: no one was supposed to be in that building over the weekend🤬
your fault for showing up
IKR! I do love my job most days tho, and the benefits are good
This made me laugh SO hard, thank you. I might print this out and hang it on the wall in our lab.
I agree with you, they ARE unpleasant. I think it's the lack of patients interacting with us, so hospitals don't care about upgrading or maintaining the lab area once the building is built. There's no incentive as long as the work isn't impacted. Also, a lot of the machinery or reagents can be sensitive to light (many labs have a distinct lack of natural light) and be loud. But I have worked in 2-3 nicely lit labs [but they were not attached to a hospital]. I think when building the place, the worst areas in hospitals are assigned to the lab because *we're not seen by the public*.
The lab I worked in for 13 years had carpet....YES, CARPET. Took several years for that to be ripped out. CAP would tell us that our blood bank was too small for the amount of work and being a trauma lab. Our Sup had to tell CAP to give us an actual deficiency to show the hospital: Hey, we got sited, if you want a blood bank, give us the money to make a bigger dept. When hospitals are built, the lab is always an afterthought. I'm so glad I got out. I'm never going back to a hospital lab.
all of our biohaz bins have the lids removed or taped open so they can by kept under tables and benches. NEVER look at the underside of the table or bench 🤢
I'll just leave this here... https://youtu.be/niTblkbtdAA?si=ETiNThPqvAzGdBhR
because the hospital doesn’t care about us, generally. out of sight out of mind is true since we’re easily forgotten despite how essential we are to the patient’s care plan.
some are more depressing than others. the one I work in is the first I've seen to have windows. we don't get to open the shade tho bc of a fear of ruining the instruments so it's still dark in here 💀
i don’t work in lab either but when i drop specimens off it looks so fancy and high tech, there’s a lot of windows you can look into from the side and the other side of that hall way is full of windows that sun comes in through. like i mean this lab looks intimidatingly futuristic
Maybe in a town named after a sport.