Thank Your Hospital Laboratory Professionals

When I was working on my Master’s degree in English, roughly 20 years ago, I also worked in a hospital laboratory. I wasn’t a Med Tech or a phlebotomist (the people who draw blood who aren’t nurses). The job I held was something called a “processor.” Specimens came into the lab, and I routed them to where they needed to go within the lab (or to other labs). I prepared specimens that needed preparation. I made sure stat collections were collected on time. In the course of an 8 hour shift, hundreds of tubes of blood passed through my hands. Almost as many containers of urine. Some swabs from various orifices. Occasionally spinal fluid, pleural fluid (from lungs), stool samples, sputum samples, toes, fetuses, legs, or tissue samples (not from Kleenex) were brought to my counter. Anything that could be secreted, coughed, extracted, excreted, or removed from the human body generally came through the lab, at one point or another, for testing. But mostly, I saw lots and lots of blood.

The lab is invisible. No one thinks of the lab, or the people who work there, who deal exclusively in bio-hazardous substances every day. Lab test results rely on laboratory professionals being rigorous, precise, and accurate with every single test. It’s the only job I’ve ever had where almost any mistake could result in someone’s physical decline or death.

The people who run the tests on the specimens are called Med Techs, or Medical Technologists. A hospital lab is considered a clinical laboratory setting. In order to become a Med Tech, you need a four year college degree. The pay rate is $52,000. For phlebotomists, it’s $34,000. (As stated here.) The pay scale for lab professionals hasn’t changed much since the time I worked in a lab.

Laboratory professionals are considered essential personnel in a hospital, which means that if it snows, or storms, or all hell breaks loose, they still need to come in to work.

My mother worked in hospital laboratories for 40 years. She was a lab director. I remember that once, when I was in elementary school and was too sick to go to school, she took me to work and I slept on the floor of her office. She had to be there. And there weren’t many childcare options available at the time.

Which is important to note, because the vast majority of hospital laboratory professionals are women.

So much has been written on women in the workplace, pay inequity, sexism, double standards, and harassment that I’m not going to go into that here. You can Google it. And if you are somehow unaware of the problem, you should definitely Google it and learn about it.

But I want to point it out because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this largely invisible, hazardous, stressful, specialized job is held primarily by women who are paid a pretty mediocre salary for work that literally saves lives.

And as egregious as that is, the invisibility of laboratory professionals also means they don’t receive your gratitude. Most of the time, you don’t even know they’re there. And when you do see them, you usually see a phlebotomist. And I’ve never heard of anyone thanking a phlebotomist for drawing blood. More often then not, patients yell at phlebotomists for drawing their blood, despite the fact that the blood work often saves their lives.

Like at any other complex job, there are dozens of factors that laboratory professionals cannot control. Like the availability of testing kits. Or the time that a blood draw is ordered (did you know that some tests are ordered at specific times in order to monitor the effectiveness of medication?). Or when a machine necessary to run tests breaks down, and needs to fixed. Or when someone brings an improperly collected specimen to the lab.

If someone brought an unlabeled tube of blood to the lab, I threw it away, and asked for a re-collect. Every tube must be labelled with the patient’s name, and the date, and the time the blood was drawn. This ensures that the Med Techs run the correct specimen. When a laboratory professional see hundreds of tubes of blood during a single shift, this precaution is essential. If you had your blood drawn twice for the same test, thank your laboratory professionals. Someone made an error and the lab professional caught it.

If you had to wait for lab results, and you had to wait longer than normal, thank your laboratory professionals. They were overworked, running hundreds of tests, and they took the time to make sure your results were accurate.

If your doctor wasn’t sure of a diagnosis, and ordered blood work, or urine tests, or testing on anything that came from your body, to confirm or deny what they suspected, thank your laboratory professionals. They performed your testing, and handled (while wearing protective equipment, of course) your bodily fluids and parts to do so.

If you needed your medication adjusted, thank your laboratory professionals for those test results that ensured you were getting the proper dosage.

If you’ve ever been a patient in an emergency room, urgent care center, hospital, or doctor’s office, thank your laboratory professionals.

If you’ve ever gotten the correct treatment for an illness, thank your laboratory professionals.

And most importantly, remember this, as we lather ourselves with soap and hand sanitizer and don our unnecessary face masks. Someone is performing those lab tests for COVID-19. For flu. For allergies. For all the nasty bugs that lay us humans low (or sometimes lay us six feet lower). And while you see your doctors and nurses and all the technicians and assistants that make up your healthcare team, there is someone you never see, a vital link in the chain of your well-being. Stop and think of them. If you’re the best of humans, find the lab and bring them some coffee and snacks. Write them a note. Say a prayer. However you do it, stop for a moment.

And thank your laboratory professionals.