Lab Week Link Roundup

It's that time of year again, where the laboratory professionals emerge from their basement lairs and sniff the air hoping to detect the scent of muffins brought in by glassware vendors.

I write about my work often on this blog, and I especially enjoy highlighting my profession during National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week. It's a profession that's not well understood by most other healthcare employees, let alone the general public, and I feel that it's important for me to educate more people about who laboratory professionals are and what they do.

I do have some new posts planned for Lab Week (April 22-26, so I guess the weekend techs get no respect this year, what's up with THAT?), but because some folks might be coming here for the first time, I wanted to link back to some of my previous lab week posts so everyone has a chance to see them.

I've written about influenza testing, and how the doctor knows it's the flu and not just a bad cold, and what doctors are looking for when they hand you a cup to pee into.

Someone asked me about all those different tubes they fill with blood when you go for a blood test, and so I wrote a little about the different tube types and what they're used for. I took it a step further and explained what happens to the tubes once they get to a lab, getting into lab information systems and automation.

Because much of my lab career so far has been spent in the blood bank, I've also got a few posts out there about blood donation and what it's like to see regular patients receiving that blood. For those interested in more of the science behind blood types and transfusion, I covered a little of that too.

Two years ago, I made a (very amateur) slide show detailing how important laboratory professionals are to the health care team, and what exactly it is we do all day. And night. And weekend. And holiday.

Not all lab work is hospital work - I will try to talk more about that this year, but for now, you can have a look at what my job in a manufacturing lab is like. 

I hope you enjoy reading a little about laboratory work. I like writing about my profession, and I'm never sure how much detail people want to see in my posts about it, so I'm always excited to have Lab Week come around to give me an excuse to geek out about it a little. There will be a few more posts up this week, so please come back!