darkSpyro

I know I barely post at the best of times, but it anyone's noticed, my attendance here was almost at nil for a while. I have good reason for it and you guys deserve an explanation as to why a moderator hasn't been moderating all that often... And it's interesting so I'm sharing it anyway.

The degree I'm currently undertaking at university (Laboratory Medicine) has a "practical placement" component which is a year long and involves "working" (it's really an internship since you work full time hours with no pay) in different hospitals in different disciplines such as microbiology, immunology, molecular pathology etc. Now to be eligible to continue to this part of the course requires you to pass a compulsory course about molecular (genetic) theory and technology and pass at least two out of your three chosen majors. If you don't meet these requirements, you have to wait a whole year to try again before you can continue the degree. So I studied my ass off this semester and passed them all which explains part of my absence.

So I'm making this topic to share with you some interesting, cool, weird, annoying and sometimes disgusting things I've seen and experienced so far working in various hospitals.

And since it's almost 1:30 in the morning, I'm going to stop here for now. Let me know if any of you are interested in anything in particular. I'll try to answer as much as I can.

Oops, forgot about this topic.

Quote: HIR

I know exactly what you're talking about. How frenetic was the work flow in whatever department(s) you wound up in?

It was absolutely crazy in almost all the departments I worked in.

Firstly I was placed in a specimen reception laboratory that received specimens from the adult hospital it was located in and received specimens from the children's hospital across the road. Specimen reception is to catalogue and triage specimens (e.g. blood, tissues, stool) before any tests can be performed. Most of the time It was as busy as you'd expect since both hospitals had emergency departments and most of the specimens received from emergency are treated as urgent.

The adult specimen reception area had about five people (six if you include me) working there most of the time which evened out the workload and even gave me enough time to work on the questions given to us by the university, but the children's specimen reception area had only two people working with one guy from the microbiology department occasionally coming by to help out. To add to that, the specimens from the children's hospital were sent by a pneumatic tubing system that blocked up and failed multiple times a day. Sometimes the blockages were so bad when the system started working again we would receive urgent specimens that were sent 7 hours ago and we'd have irate doctors and scientists asking us to hurry up when we'd have absolutely no control over the situation. So most of the time all I could really do was work on my uni questions and whenever the massive backlog of specimens finally came though, I occasionally was shoved off my station so someone with more experience could process the specimens faster. Despite all that, there were still many times where there was a steady flow of specimens coming through that I could deal with without close supervision.

My next placement was at a different hospital doing phlebotomy (drawing blood from patients) and it was really erratic. It wasn't a particularly large hospital and it didn't have an emergency department, but the clinic I was placed in also served as a walk-in for patients not admitted to the hospital so it was hard to predict how busy the day would be. On some days the professional phlebotomists and I could go literally for hours without anyone coming in, so we'd just sit behind the reception desk and watch the TV in the waiting room or just talk to each other with the occasional patient coming through. Other times there would suddenly be an influx of patients that'd fill up the small waiting are in less than a minute.

Going off on a tangent here; I absolutely hated when this happened since I was often left alone at the reception desk greeting patients and was expected to check their forms, enter their information into the computer system, take them through to the room where they'd be bled and take their blood in the correct tubes, using the correct procedure ALL WITHOUT ANY SUPERVISION. Course I was supervised for the first couple of bleeds, but that's it. I was literally only supervised about five times before they decided I was competent enough to do it without supervision. I already have problems with social anxiety and it took so much energy to grin and bear it.

However, I was apparently pretty good at phlebotomy and talking with patients in stressful situations. In two and a half weeks, I managed about 70 "successful" unsupervised bleeds.

My most recent placement was in the histopathology lab in the same hospital where I did my specimen reception placement. Work flow here was the most consistent so far. Not too busy, but it was rare to have moments where there was nothing we couldn't do. I'm saying we since I was partnered up with another student and we're placed in most of the same parts of the lab for six of the seven weeks we were there. I was placed with another student in specimen reception too, but we weren't partnered up and we rarely saw or spoke to each other. Anyways, the busiest times were always in the morning when we received the specimens from the hospital's specimen reception department and specimens from almost every other hospital in the state that didn't have a well equipped histopathology laboratory. So again we have to perform a similar kind of specimen reception procedure within the histopathology department and separate the hospital from the "branch" (specimens not collected within the hospital) specimens before any of the specimens can be processed for histological procedures.

I hope I answered your question even though it's almost four months late and long winded.

Quote: Vespi

wow that sounds really cool!! good luck!!

in the interest of halloween, whats the most disgusting story you have?

Thanks. I'm doing pretty well so far.

I suppose I can treat this as an early Halloween question now.

I've got a few disgusting stories, but that all depends on what you think is the worst. So I'll post a few of them and you can choose.

When I was placed in the histopathology department, there was an amputated leg in a clear plastic tub floating in formalin (a liquid preservative with formaldehyde) directly in front of where I sat in one of the labs. It was only about a meter away so I could see it in detail. Over the seven weeks I was there, the skin on the foot of the leg started to blister and eventually the skin on the entire sole of the foot peeled away and floated on its own. Whenever the desk moved which was pretty often since many people bumped into it, the entire limb would move and globules of fat would break off the top of the leg making the formalin a dirty oily brown soupy mixture.

Again when I was in the histopathology department, I was tasked to retrieve a "wet" specimen (a specimen that hasn't been processed by histological methods and is still in formalin) stored in a jar in a box with other separate specimens. One of the specimen jars was holding a gallbladder had opened and spilled onto the jars of all the other specimens. The gallbladder holds undigested bile and is incredibly pungent, so when I opened the box, I was hit with the strongest, burning smell I've ever encountered. It makes your eyes water, your nostrils feel like they're on fire, you can't breathe and you feel like you want to gag. Luckily, I didn't have to clean it up.

Also, since wet histopathology specimens are really messy when they've yet to be processed, I had to clean a bone saw used to cut a large piece of tumorous bone. Bone is placed in a de- calcifying solution so it's easier to cut by becoming soft. So the bone saw was covered in globules of almost liquid-like bone.

There was also the urine sample in a jar that was incredibly foamy and cloudy. Unfortunately I had to open it to separate it into viles to give to other departments. It had that distinctive bacterial pus smell to it.

Quote: ShadowMewX

I'm studying biochemistry, so I've always been secretly interested in hearing whatever stories ya got, considering we're along a similar path! :0 (Microbiology yaaAAaAss.) Glad you passed all your courses, and it's good to see you back! ^.^

Biochem is interesting and I was really good at chemistry when I started out at uni, I didn't choose it as one of my majors though.

Thank you.

I've got a new disgusting story for you guys and I doubt anything else I'll see during my placements will be able to top it.

I'll post it later since I'm currently at my placement.

Im extremely interested.