Category: LOL Moments

You know how you would say to a little girl that she does so well with her blood draw tell her, “You’re such a big girl now!”. Apparently, there are times this doesn’t apply. Here’s another embarrassing story on my journey. I was drawing blood from a nice lady, and she does feel a little… Continue reading Big Woman

I used to work for a high volume Trauma Center and I had gotten a call from one of the medical residents in regard to a patient bleeding on the floor. The phone call came about 30 minutes after she placed order for 6 superpacks of irradiated platelets. Now we generally only keep 4 units,… Continue reading Inventory Issue

One day as I walked in to the lab, I saw a pregnant lady crying inside our draw room. She said her car was broken into and the only thing that was stolen was a wine bottle in a brown paper bag. It turns out, that's where she was keeping her urine sample, which she'd… Continue reading Instant Karma

A nurse brought a urine specimen to the laboratory.  Even though we have a paperless electronic system, the specimen came with a paper order that says “Hospitality” on it as the level of care. Nothing too suspicious about it until we ran the sample.  Urine dipstick came up with +3 Glucose and Trace Blood.  Microscopically,… Continue reading Lab Week Prank

Went to our skilled nursing facility to draw blood on one of the residents. I usually engage on a conversation with my patients just to be friendly and keep them at ease. While talking to my patient, he then asked me if I was going to sell his blood. Told him no. Couldn’t really tell… Continue reading Bloody Mary

Ah yes, the urgent blood culture. I shall just speak to the germs and ask if they would mind growing quicker, or that we will use the special incubator that makes bacteria grow faster. I did tell a physician once that was demanding an urgent blood culture that I would put in in the microwave… Continue reading Urgent Blood Culture

I worked at a pediatric cancer center. One night we received a urine sample from one of our patients. We ran the sample on the analyzer and the glucose was greater than 500 mg/dl. We run a Clinitest and there is so much sugar, it caused a "pass through." We immediately began to panic so… Continue reading The Urine That Wasn’t

We have a big class of over 150 students. Imagine 150 interns in this huge laboratory run mostly by student interns under the supervision of a few licensed medical technologists. It was fun and never without a few pranks here and there. It was customary for the previous year's interns to prank the newbies. My… Continue reading Special Ingredient

I just started a my new job in Anatomic Pathology at my current hospital. I was there maybe 2 weeks, new supervisor just learning the way things are done. Evidently, before I arrived, the pathology department was willing to release specimens back to patients once the report was finalized. A HUGE no no since they… Continue reading He Bit What Off???

One day I was drawing blood on a patient. I noticed how anxious he was and had sweaty hands. I asked him if he is okay and he just nodded and looked away. And so, I proceeded. I put the tourniquet on, and told the patient to make a fist, and he did. While in… Continue reading Possible Miscommunication