I've linked to this powerpoint-turned-video before, but in light of National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week coming up on April 22nd, I would like to share it again.
I created this presentation last year while I was still working in a hospital lab. It was intended as an overview of a medical technologist's daily routine, and my supervisors liked it enough that it was shared with the rest of the hospital staff over the hospital's main intranet page. It's not a fancy video with music and sound, because I'm not talented in those ways - I didn't create this, or link to it here or on Facebook, with a goal of self-promotion. If it helps a single person better understand what medical technologists do, then I'm proud of my work and it has served its purpose. If it steers one curious student towards the profession, all the better.
I created this presentation last year while I was still working in a hospital lab. It was intended as an overview of a medical technologist's daily routine, and my supervisors liked it enough that it was shared with the rest of the hospital staff over the hospital's main intranet page. It's not a fancy video with music and sound, because I'm not talented in those ways - I didn't create this, or link to it here or on Facebook, with a goal of self-promotion. If it helps a single person better understand what medical technologists do, then I'm proud of my work and it has served its purpose. If it steers one curious student towards the profession, all the better.
Since creating this, I've moved on to a new career, even though I'm still called a medical technologist. The change in perspective has showed me new sides of the profession and how it's not necessarily all about the hospital.
Next week's posts will be lab-related, in honor of National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week 2012. I would love some reader input and suggestions for topics, because I want to educate folks about the lab, what goes on there, and what it's like to be a part of the hidden side of medicine. So, please, ask me why the phlebotomist really needs all those tubes, and what the colors of the caps mean, or why sometimes they wrap the tubes in foil. Ask me why lab results take so long, and what in the world they're doing with your cup of urine when you leave it behind the little door. I'm interested in all questions, comments, suggestions and ideas.
Wait, are the colors of caps consistent across labs? I seriously always just figured it was an internal thing, and the bar codes on the sides were the important parts of communicating info to other labs if blood had to be sent out there.
ReplyDeleteHow difficult is it to send blood to labs? Between them? My husband once had to have some blood drawn in our hometown for a study he was participating in, and the first place we tried to have it drawn at was willing to draw the blood, but insisted we'd have to post it. NOT A CHANCE! We left and went elsewhere. How would something like that be done? A normal, not medically associated person sending blood to a lab? Is that even possible? Do you think the receiving lab would have accepted it, or do you think they'd have assumed that since we sent it ourselves, it was contaminated?
Common tests: Are the common tests that a hospital pulls internally often very different from the ones say, a PCP would pull? Or are they fairly the same? What was the most common test you saw in your old job? How did you do it?
How much urine do you guys really need? Is it really so easy to contaminate urine?
Okay. That's what I have for now.