How many of you experienced being poked by a needle and your blood collected in a tube like this? If you visit your doctor for annual check-ups even if you’re not sick, you are still a patient, and your doctor might have ordered lab tests and asked a nurse or a phlebotomist to get your blood.
Do you know where your blood is taken and what is done with it? It is taken to the laboratory to be tested. And the people who do the testing? Well, they are the medical lab scientists, dubbed as the “detectives” of healthcare, sussing out clues in your samples such blood, other body fluids (the most common of which is urine; there’s also fluid from the heart, lungs, abdomen and even your brain), and tissue (from tumors, which commonly will be preserved in a cup of formalin, the same chemical used to embalm dead people). These samples undergo processing and testing, producing data which we are submitted to your doctor as a lab report. In fact, doctors and other medical practitioners use these data to make 60-70% of medical decisions that greatly impact everyone’s health! This article is meant to inform you about the processes and people behind the scenes because they are as impactful to your health as the things you see when you visit your doctor or when you get admitted to a hospital.
Yes, lab scientists deal with stuff that are as gross as they are potentially infectious, but somebody needs to do the job, right? And because of the nature of our job, it’s only logical to whisk us to a location away from everyone – and the perfect place in the hospital for this? It’s the basement! And that’s the reason we are also dubbed as the “hidden profession that saves lives” according to Dr. Rodney Rohde, Regent’s Professor and Global Fellow of Texas State University. Why is that so? Because demand for lab tests is the highest medical activity in healthcare costing Medicare almost S10 B or 1.7% of the total health care budget for doctors to use in making 60-70% of medical decisions. Fortunately, that hidden profession title will change in a few years. Our academic colleagues in Rutger’s University created a program, the Doctor of Clinical Laboratory Science, and the graduates are now the face of the profession. They will be rubbing elbows with doctors on the hospital floors, assisting them in ordering appropriate lab tests ensuring patient safety. What’s the deal with ordering the wrong tests? It causes misdiagnosis, delayed treatment and costs hospitals to the tune of over $1.7 M a month according to a study published in the National Library of Medicine in Aug 2020.
If you stand in front of the lab, you’ll see n orange colored sign with three overlapping circles, a biohazard sign. It just means, potentially infectious materials are processed inside which you might catch so it warns you to be careful. Inside the door, the picture you will see is a group of lab scientists going about their work using instruments, equipment and applying their technical expertise to generate accurate data. In contrast to the police detectives who stake out in front of a suspect’s lair, lab scientists do their work within the four walls of a clinical lab, where they suss out the culprits of disease and illness from samples brought to the lab. Examples are urine streaked on to a petri dish growing a culture of bacteria or fungus, extracted DNA placed in microtubes ready for genetic analysis, a piece of tissue which was thinly cut, stained and mounted on a slide ready for examination, or whole blood run on a an instrument that performs a complete blood count your total white blood cells and red blood cells.
The daily and constant stress come from racing against the clock every day, testing several hundreds to thousands of samples to meet deadlines we call turnaround time or TAT. It can be as short as a few minutes to as long as a few to several hours. If a patient is fighting for his life in the ER, the sample for testing will bear the acronym” STAT”, derived from Latin word “statim”, which means, immediately! It is the medical equivalent to ASAP which jumpstarts the pumping of our adrenaline and where the race against time begins! The time limit can be as short as 10 minutes
from the time blood is collected, transported to the lab, and tested to the time the lab report is released and received by the doctor. Yes 10 minutes!
Why is a lab scientist’s job important?
The lab industry performs around 14 billion tests annually under different specialties and sub-specialties. According to an article authored by RW Forsman of the Mayo Clinic lab services make up under 5% of the hospital budget but leverage 60-70% of doctor’s decisions – whether to admit, discharge or prescribe medication which greatly impacts not only healthcare costs but also health outcomes of you and me!
The data that medical lab scientists produce happens to be crucial for doctors and medical practitioners to make a differential diagnosis. An example is when a patient shows a type of severe rash that is common between patients with drug allergies or in a patient with scabies, the latter being an infestation of the skin by a mite called Sarcoptes scabiei. The doctor at this point needs to decide which is the actual cause of the rashes by ordering a microscopic examination of a piece of skin from the patient. This will show the mite, eggs that it laid, and its waste, pointing to scabies as the cause of the rashes. A lab report will be submitted to the doctor who will then proceed to order the nurse to give the right treatment to cure the patient from scabies.
Now, you have an idea who are the detectives of healthcare are, the medical lab scientists who test samples from your body should you get sick and help the doctor evaluate your condition, make a diagnosis and let you go home, prescribe treatment or admit you to a hospital. With medical lab scientists around, you’re in good hands.
References:
2. Forsman RW. Why is the laboratory an afterthought for managed care organizations? Clin Chem. 1996;42(5):813–6.
Clinical Laboratory by Marlon Bayot et al , Jan 26, 2024 NCBI Bookshlef of the National Institute of Health
6. Patient-specific Narrative Interpretations of Complex Clinical Laboratory Evaluations: Who Is Competent to Provide Them? | Clinical Chemistry | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
Evaluation and cost estimation of laboratory test overuse in 43 commonly ordered parameters through a Computerized Clinical Decision Support System (CCDSS) in a large university hospital
9. Medical Error Statistics [2020]: Deaths/Year & Malpractice Rates (mymedicalscore.com) Assessed and Endorsed by the MedReport Medical Review Board
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