Behind the Scenes - The REAL DEAL

Clinical Labs operate behind the scenes.  When functioning properly, the patient doesn’t even know they are there; your specimen disappears and the results reappear…Voila!. The work is highly complex, but if performed properly, the work is completed quickly and the patient is cared for quickly. Oftentimes, once care continues, The Lab is forgotten…not irrelevant, but not in the forefront of a patient’s thought.

…but, for the sake of this blog, let’s bring it back into the forefront of your thought, or at least into some region of your thought…because this work makes a difference in your clinical care, sometimes THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE, of any of the important work being performed on your behalf.

Like many clinical activities, the Lab is regulated by Federal and State guidelines.  The Lab must operate in compliance at all times; deviations are not allowed.  Clinical Labs typically operate 24 hours per day seven days per week, are staffed by technically qualified people who are trained to work in compliance with standard operating procedures (SOPs).  Oversight is provided by a qualified Lab Director, and day-to-day operation is managed by a Lab Supervisor.  The Lab Director creates the SOPs, defines the technologies to be used, verifies the performance of those technologies, and verifies that the technical staff are qualified and fully trained to utilize those technologies.  The Lab Supervisor is responsible for maintaining the technologies in good operating performance, ensuring that the lab is adequately staffed to complete the daily work, and verifies that all technical staff follow SOPs and complete the work correctly in an expedited fashion.  The technical staff are fully trained in how to use the technology guided by proven SOPs. (See the section on People v/v qualifications.)

While that description seems sterile, it is anything but.  The Lab employs state of the art scientific concepts from the fields of chemistry, cellular biology, immunology, microbiology, molecular biology, and clinical microscopy, integrating these disciplines with advanced computational and imaging technologies.  This is the type of work environment that hard core scientists seek and in which they thrive.  The work is challenging, stimulating, and requires application of deep intellectual skills to solve problems.  THIS IS THE REAL DEAL - real scientists thrive in this environment.  Staff find their work satisfying because they know their work makes a difference…patients are diagnosed correctly, are triaged quickly, and move on to appropriate care and treatment so that they can quickly resume their regular life activities.  Overall, a very satisfying profession.

AND, all of this takes place in the background; the patient is usually not aware of it, but derive significant benefit from it when things happen in accordance with the plan.

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