Welcome to The Mislabeled Specimen (TMS)
“If we can make one lab person laugh hard enough to forget his/her problems, then our efforts are not wasted.”
Not Until You’re Certified
During my internship, I once asked a nurse for help drawing blood from a toddler in ...
Bad Timing
Here’s another one of my funny experiences drawing blood at our nursing home next door. For ...
Urgent: Patient Needs to Smoke
I work in a microbiology lab. Currently we are swamped with covid testing. On the covid ...
It Kept Clotting
We had a nurse who stuck her patient SIX times before calling a phlebotomist. The phlebobomist ...
Screaming Prank
A middle-aged guy came in for blood work one day. He's the chatty type with some ...
The Mustard Prank
One time, I put mustard in a stool specimen container, went upstairs, and sent it down ...
Karma’s a Bitch
When I was a teenager, my first boyfriend dumped me for another girl. Broke my heart! ...
Clotted? That’s Impossible!
While working in hematology, I received a microtainer from our newborn nursery with orders to perform ...
Culture It Now!
It was the last month of my internship days and I was assigned in Microbiology department ...
I’m Used To It
I was drawing blood on a female patient. Her husband was in the same phlebotomy room ...
Wet Mount Entertainment
I was working the graveyard shift and received a wet prep specimen. The order specifically said ...
Not the Good Tupperware!
I work three 12-hour shifts at a family medicine/convenient care clinic, so every now and then ...
Peanut Butter Jar
Back in the day, we needed first morning urine for pregnancy tests. A patient called asking ...
Non Verbal Instructions
We once had a gentleman who needed to submit a semen specimen—but instead, he kept bringing ...
