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Working the Glucose and PEPFAR Benches

July 05, 2014 J. 0 Comments

 GLUCOSE

The Glucose bench was a 2-parter because from 8am - 11am, the Scientist on that bench had to organize and oversee the running of the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) and afterwards would run the test for those samples.. including any other requests for that day. The OGTT itself takes two-hours to perform however there are usually delays - payments, late arrivals etc. - and the test ends up going for about 3 hours. The patients have to be monitored so i sit with them, explain the test and answer any questions they might have and then collect their blood sample every 30 minutes after giving them the prescribed glucose load. I collect 5 blood samples and 3 urine samples, per patient, in total. The rest of the time i just read a book or play "Plants and Zombies 2" on my iPad.

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All-in-all this bench wasn't so bad either. Glucose is a priority test so a full batch of 34 samples on the 902 analyzer (see image) would take less than an hour to run and document. We usually get three full batches daily.

PEPFAR

I believe PEPFAR stands for President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. It is a special treatment clinic (STC) for people living with HIV/AIDS. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are STC days and the tests requested from the Chemistry Lab are usually electrolytes, LFT, glucose, urinalysis and lipid profile. The 902 analyzer is capable of running all these tests and therefore is also used. About 50 PEPFAR samples come into the Chem Path Lab, on average, per STC day.

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Working the Electrolyte and Urinalysis Benches.

July 02, 2014 J. 0 Comments

Before i begin i should mention that the Electrolyte and Urinalysis benches at The Hospital Labs are the only two benches where you do not need be attached to another Med Lab Scientist. You get to work solo with no one hanging over your shoulder or, in some cases, slowing you down. They are obviously my two favorite benches, second only to the more laid-back-two-working-days-a-week hormone bench. :)

ELECTROLYTE

The parameters here are only: Sodium, Chloride, Bicarbonate and Potassium. There is an ISE analyzer specifically dedicated to this bench which gives individual results in less than 2 minutes. I was taught to operate it in all of ten minutes and then.. that was it. Oh, i did have to also learn the normal references ranges for each of the parameters as well.

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URINALYSIS

 The tests run on the Urinalysis bench simply require dipsticks. You dip the strip into the container containing your sample and wait for a reaction.. voila! - Just like magic. Urine pregnancy tests are also part of this bench and again, a dipstick is used like those used in home pregnancy kits. The one part of this bench that i found distasteful was the Occult Blood Test (OBT). The sample for this test is stool and as you can imagine, even with gloves and a face mask, i didn't relish the thought of handling anyone's stool sample.

It took some doing but seven months later, i can finally test a sample without having to skip lunch.

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