This happened back in my home country where I took my first job as a Medical Technologist. At the time, I was a Med Tech Intern and was assigned a month at our Clinical Microscopy Department.
The lab wasn’t huge, but we have a fair share of patients, including some newborns. Some weren’t even named by their parents yet, so it’s not uncommon to receive urine specimens with semi-generic labels of BB Girl Doe or BB Boy Smith for the sake of identification.
One time, I was working on a specimen with a label that says BB Girl Velasquez (not her real name, of course). However, what’s causing the confusion is the date of birth and the age of 21 years according to the order it came with. I grabbed the phone and called the nurse thinking it was a typo. The nurse confirmed that the patient was indeed a 21-year old with a name of BB Girl Velasquez. Apparently, her parents think it’s a cute name and never changed her generic nursery name. It was quite a unique name but caused me to have a bit of a name confusion in lab.
Submitted by:
Ian Tiu
Laboratory Manager
Iowa, USA
