Urgent: Patient Needs to Smoke

I work in a microbiology lab. Currently we are swamped with covid testing. On the covid requisition, there is an urgent section that the healthcare professional can tick off and needs to provide a reason (e.g. urgent surgery or patient coded) and it has to be approved by a microbiologist. Of course, 98% of the time, people just check that off without reading the requirements. Once checked off, we have to call the floor/ward and determine if the case is really that urgent and we have to educate them.

On one occasion, I was speaking to the nurse who requested urgent screening and he told me “it’s urgent because the patient needs to smoke. She’s becoming uncontrollable, trying to smoke in the bathroom and all!” I was speechless for about 5 seconds until I could muster up a few courtesy words of “oh that’s unfortunate and I understand your frustration but…urgent screening is for more…urgent cases like if your patient is coding or got surgery in the next few hours”.

Are you kidding me? Is this a joke? Our lab is swamped with mountains and mountains of covid swabs to go through and I have to waste my time calling every single one of these “so-called urgent screens” just to find out because a patient needs to smoke or a patient needs to book a flight?? (Another story for another time).

The reasoning was ridiculous, but thinking back, it was also hilarious. As I shared this story to my colleagues, they all agreed this story should be in a covid-19 moments Hall of Fame.

Submitted by:
Amy Yeung
Medical Laboratory Scientist
Montreal, Canada