NYSC

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.

Source

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.