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LE Preps, Osmotic fragility, CK and LDH isoenzymes for every cardiac profile specimen, citation LIS, multiple use vacutainer hubs and tourniquets, manual carbon monoxide, Astra chemistry analyzer…
In my mind, I used to struggle with single use hubs and tourniquets. Back when I worked in the Phils, we were “budgeted” how many hubs and tourniquets per shift
I’ve done clotting time (tube method) and bleeding time (Ivy method) while working as an ER phlebotomist 😋 Slide method of blood typing as well
I don’t have to do CE credits to renew my ASCP.
I’ve used a water bath to run PT/INR
I’ve used capillary tubes to test a patient’s hematocrit and used one of these to measure 😎
Cooked sugars, buns, mouth pipetted, ate, drank & smoked in the lab. Wore white uniforms, hose & shoes. Many moons ago. 😬
Lab forms with micro notes written on them, manual coagulation tests, playing practical jokes on colleagues and actually having a laugh 😂
Sounds like the lab I worked in from 2006-2016 minus the smoking in the lab. Ran by scientists stuck in the old ways and I loved every second of it. It was such chaos ❤
Mouth pipetting, eating and drinking in the lab, no gloves, manual CSF cell counts, Learning to make the perfect blood smears and manually staining slides….
I used a fibrometer to perform fibrinogens, wearing gloves was just made mandatory the year I did my internship. We had to print tickets from the Coulter analyzers and tube results through the pneumatic tube system.
Went to training on ACA, and Stratus as a primary operator. Used Kodak Ektachem, Dade Dimension. Plotted QC results manually in pencil on large graph paper sheets (basically a manual Levy Jennings). Filled out a multi-ply form for critical results, walked it to the nurse caring for the patient to sign and put a copy on the paper chart. Hematology had a 3 part diff on the Coulter (T100 I think?), ran manually one tube at a time.
Mouth pipetting, smoking in lab, boil BUNs, titrate CO2, solder wires to calibrate ACA, paper requisitions, flame photometer for Na and K, LOAI times and pump tube changing!
Long enoug to keep calm and mouth shut evwn if the whole lab is on fire..i would grab my purse and leave
We had potlucks IN the lab. Ate at our station. Cooked lunch in BB. And warmed all the potluck dishes in the autoclave.
Spit strings, glass rbc/wbc pipettes, washing test tubes and coming back to find sandwiches warming up in the test tube dryer, bare handed everything, cutting needles, Lee-White coag tests, blood culture using a tube with a needle on each end, eating, drinking, and smoking right out on the bench, actual cross matches… just missed using frogs for pregnancy tests
Only Hep A and B and non A/B, before Herpes testing, AIDS and gloves. Open toed shoes, eating, drinking and smoking and mouth pipetting was the norm. No electronic or IS xmatches and everything handwritten and in log book. The Good Ole days.
Write reports with carbon paper, mouth pipetting, drinks in lab, log books for resulting, making agar for plates, called Gram Stain results to ER
I’m retired now but I stored my container of milk for my breakfast cereal in the Serology fridge.
YEP! All of that and we’re still alive! New techs freak out if you handle a closed tube of blood for a second without gloves. “Oh! You don’t have gloves on!” Lol. No Sweetie, I’m not going to lick my hands!
After reading some of the comments all I can say is been there done that. Had 40 years in the field. Some days they didn’t pay me enough but some days I would have payed them for the fun. It was a great career but I am thankful that I am retired!