Let’s have some fun by sharing with the lab community your naughty lab confessions. Feel free to comment anonymously to keep things private, or login to join the conversation.
Lab Confessions
The Fun Side of Clinical Laboratory Professionals
The Fun Side of Clinical Laboratory Professionals
Let’s have some fun by sharing with the lab community your naughty lab confessions. Feel free to comment anonymously to keep things private, or login to join the conversation.
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Lab Confessions – The Mislabeled Specimen Uncategorized
In the Blood station, I dance to the beat of the platelet agitator and to the rocking movements of the thawing machine! Has anyone else ever done the same? 😆
If I can dance, I’ll do it! 😎 hula in the lab with blood bank instruments setting the pace
I work at a country where tampons are not a thing; we often use sanitary pads.
One day as I was having my period, I squatted to take reagents out from the refrigerator, and out dropped a large 🩸 of blood!! 😨
As I was squatting, the large 🩸 smoothly came out from the side of my panty, rolled down my leg and down to the lab floor.
And so there was a little pool of blood on the lab floor. I quickly left to take something to clean the mess and a coworker saw it.
I lied and said it was some spilled specimen!! 🥶🤭
Long ago when I was still an intern, my batchmate rested his eyes on the microscope pretending he was reading, when in fact he was dozing off 😴.
One problem: he forgot to turn the light on! 🤭
I’ve often left the cordless lab phone in the fridge just to get ten minutes peace on a busy day! I also go to the cold room to fart or to scream depending on my mood.
You must work at a small town lab 🥴 is the cold room a walk-in fridge?
City lab! Yeah cold room is a walk in fridge and where its situated not many people frequent it 🤣
Haha I’m jealous of your dedicated fart and scream room. Where I used to work, it’s called Microbiology dept 🤪 except that I can’t scream that loud or they’ll question my sanity
Haha!! I always think the cold room is great because it’s basically sound proof too. Micro is definitely a place you could get away with farting 🤣
Who farted??? it’s the stinky c diff specimen we processed earlier 🤣🤣🤣
If you fart in Micro, just blame it on the stool specimens! Btw… same dept bro!
I want to tell my lab director to shove it after they sent an email out saying we are further suspending lab week. It’s almost the straw that broke the camels back.
Damn, I’m so sorry. Btw, love the name! 😎
why would they do that? 😩
They cannot cancel an event that is not in the hospital, not funded by the hospital, and has no connection to it. Lab Week is not a hospital- dependent celebration!! Its our celebration of ourselves! Do they cancel nurses week? Doctors week? Secretarys Day? I submit Laboratory Scientists er al week is much more important than these: WE SEE EVERY PATIENT!!!!! That ought to be a theme every year!!!!
Exactly. very good points indeed. It’s not like the rest of the hospital does a whole lot anyway. Working in a small hospital is so much better imho because people from other departments are more acquainted with each other. We had treats and invited everyone to play some games with us. We had fun. I have to help plan the whole thing
At the hospital I used to work at they acknowledged every other discipline except Lab. If we wanted to have any kind of celebration we had to do it ourselves because “it wasn’t for the whole hospital”
I love to shake anything with a bone in it while it’s in the container and hear it rattle. My favourite are the toes.
🤢🦴🍖
I sometimes fart inside our fridge in the lab. Like I open the fridge, position my bum, and then fart. Then I close the fridge quickly. I don’t know why I like to do it, but it makes me giggle every time. 😎
I hate when people tell me where to stick them. & I hate when people ask me to use a “baby needle”.. one time, I used a butterfly and the woman said “ that doesn’t look like your smallest one..” no lady it’s not. You don’t even need a butterfly. Sometimes I feel like they are such babies 😂 IT ANNOYS ME JUST LET ME DO MY JOB AND DETERMINE WHICH NEEDLE IS NEEDED
It’s like people telling you that you have ONE SHOT…sure! I will just move the needle around until I get it. No phlebotomist would ever want to poke anyone twice unless the patient is a hard stick 😩
Totally agree 💯
Mlt tech , a super recent grad and there’s a coworker I met while doing my clinicals . We have such good “chemistry ” I even call him my work husband. Problem is, I’m 23 ( no kids) and he’s 35 with a 10 yr old . I really enjoy our friendship but honestly want more lol , I’ve seen signs of interest and we text eachother every day and its been a few months of this. other problem is I’ve been in a 3 1/2 year relationship and I’m not sure what to do . 😵💫
I QUIT MY WORK BECAUSE THEY USE MEDITECH.
omg is it really that bad? 😱
Meditech is built from the flames of hell
No, Meditech is a breeze compared to Soft. Soft was built when a bunch of computer science nerds decided to build an LIS with no lab involvement.
My weird confession. It gets hella cold where I am in the winter, in the morning I always hold fresh pee( gloves on of course) but enjoy that it’s a little warm in the way back to the processing center 😂
What’s the difference with people doing that with a hot cup of coffee? hahaha☕️ Warm urine does the job
Umm..no! pee is pee and coffee is coffee.
When I was pregnant and streaking ua micro plates. I swear that one sample smelled like buffalo style wings.. lol I tried to get my phleboto come and smell it but he wouldn’t. All I know is that I wanted to eat buffalo wings & I normally can’t take the vinegar smell.
Our part of the lab occasionally gets semen specimens from the fertility clinic by mistake. Due to stability testing has to be cancelled. We have one tech who absolutely hates seeing those specimens, so one day I took a large urine cup type jar filled it up with half water half hand lotion and reprinted a specimen label with that test code and left it on her desk, she was speechless, she turned three shades of green and kept saying “There’s no way.” I fessed up before she pulled the tag up in the system and disposed of the “specimen” so that it wouldn’t get mistaken for a real one. Did a similar prank with a fake sputum specimen to our newest tech. That was pretty funny too.
Okay this might be gross to some. But I love the smell of fresh pee. It almost has a coffee like aroma to it. I didn’t mean those nasty UTI specimens with strong ammonia odor. Just clean pee. Anyone else feel the same way?
I see your point there but I don’t particularly enjoy it
Nah no way!
Not pee. But I always thought the smell of Proteus mirabilus was like Tastykake chocolate cupcakes 😄
I have had this conversation in this group before. After doing mostly UA for a couple years I have found that I like the smell of normal urines. Although I would say it is much better than the smell of coffee because coffee smells terrible.
I’ve experienced the opposite. A transient whiff of urine smell with a cup of coffee. Turns out there are sulfur compounds called mercaptans in coffee and one of those compounds (3-mercapto-3-methylbutyl formate) is found in cat urine. It can also smell like skunk to some people.
Glad it’s only a whiff and then it’s gone, so I can enjoy my cup of joe. 😆
Pee almost always smelled like popcorn to me 😭💀
When I have a hard stick and I can tell the CBC is clotted, I pull the clot out with a needle before I send it down to the lab……haven’t had one reject yet…
Those are the ones that have really low platelets and we just KNOW someone pulled a clot out. I catch them every single solitary time and call for a recollect. That’s crappy work.
You can’t remove the micro clots, they will be detected on the slide!!!!
Seriously? You are setting up the patient by getting false lab results! You are doing harm to the patient!
Ohh we know. We see the slide, yo.
That’s a substandard sample and anyone who values the work they do, or is gonna treat the patient based on the results they get…..would never do such a thing. Shameful!!
My opinion!!
Dude, you should be fired. Like legit. Where’s your sense of patient care?
Met my wife while I was in med tech school and she was in med school. After she graduated we moved a few times for residency and fellowship and I usually took a lab job wherever she was so that we could see each other more. Well more than one call room, supply room, and single person bathroom got to host us bleeding off some work stress in a healthy, vigorous manner. We never got caught despite some close calls though I wonder if my coworkers ever noticed the big grin on my face when I strolled back in from break.
namaste. I’m glad you enjoyed our destressing break rooms.
Most patients think I use butterfly needles because it’s a smaller gauge and I care about their comfort. While that is true, but the main reason is that I use them when I expect a hard stick and I might need to fish around a bit.
Yeah, nothing more satisfying that the flash of blood in the chamber when drawing from a literal stone
LOL true that
When a patient asks for the “baby needle” or the butterfly and they have literal pipes for veins, I still use a 21 straight needle. They almost always look away while I draw them. Not a single flinch from them, they thank me and then they see the needle and tell me “Wow you must be really good
same goes with people who claims that they’re a hard stick, then find out they have garden hose veins
One phleb does a crap job one time in their life and all of a sudden they are a “hard stick” forever!
Yep, one person can’t admit they scuffed the draw and tell the patient they need a baby need and have terrible veins.
Exactly. I’ve had several people who said they’re a hard stick and BAM there’s a giant vein right there!
I secretly roll my eyes each time I have patients come in middle of the night and when asked what the problem is, they had a headache that has been going on for weeks. wth didn’t they know its much cheaper going to their regular doctor versus an ER visit? and at 1am in the morning?
A&E is what we call the ER in the UK. It stands for Accident and Emergency.
we have different providers running the ER each day. i doubt patients can be choosy
I know people who use the ER as their doctor. Usually those are the ones who have no insurance and do not plan to pay the bill.
It’s because they usually aren’t paying for it.