Lab Fashion 101

Lab Coat Rule #53: Secure lower pockets with spare labels or scotch tape before dumping last week's specimens to prevent stow-aways.

Healthcare workers are all familiar with standard precautions & PPE. The majority of us probably have an annual training to complete as part of our competency checks. I've seen some labs that in an effort to not blend in with the walls & benches, opted to order pretty sky blue or lavender fluid repellent lab coats, but we have the plain old white ones. As part of Lab Week one year, there was a 'design your own lab coat' contest. Apparently the folks down in our Microbiology lab are quite creative & chose the 3D route by drawing fake bacteria inside plastic petri dishes & grabbing a few disposable transfer swabs & strange green fuzzy things & gluing them to the outsides of their coats. Chemistry really didn't stand a chance in that arena. Plastic Petri dishes are much more nifty looking than plastic test tubes, and a lot more easy to attach to clothing than an Erlenmeyer flask.

For everyday wear- and to make sure no one dares go into your pockets to steal your precious water resistant industrial marker- we mainly have our name or initials on the back. A few of us have taken to drawing on the front chest pocket in effort to jazz up our daily protective wear. I opt for chemical symbols or hokey lab related quotes. So far the most popular of my choices was 'If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.' I can't take credit for it, I saw it on a t-shirt from this website. Another quote I've used on my coat is "Do not meddle in the affairs of chemists. For you are carbon based and will dissolve in acid." This week's quote is "Doing things in the lab that would be a felony in your garage." I concider it a way not only to express my personality, but as a way to cheer up any co-worker that might happen to spot all the scribbles on my coat as they pass by muttering about yet another failed calibration.

Being that the lab is mainly staffed by women, we try to have scrubs for every holiday, seasonal color, cause, etc. Just as our 'street clothes' give a glimpse of our personalities, so do our choices in lab wear. I'm nuts about little animated critters, so I have a few tops with Chip & Dale and one with squirrels on it. I'm also a big industrial, classic rock & punk/post-punk music fan so I have a top with skull & crossbones and hearts. I'm pretty confidant that during college I was stalked by a tv writer on my trips to NYC and they created the character of Abby based on me.

On the rare occassions our lab isn't the same temperature as the North Pole, some of us wear a t-shirt with a scrub jacket and matching scrub pants or other type of work pants. Some of my favorite shirts are on advanceweb, and they have items for other nursing & allied health fields as well. This is perfect when I'm crunching my correlation numbers, and this is good when I get stuck doing the 'dishes'. We are a fashionable, and humorous bunch. You have to be in this line of work- especially on days where every one of your analyzers are acting up & everything coming in from the emergency room is hemolyzed. We are grace under fire.

As I said, the lab is a female dominated workplace, and if you want to start tossing around stereotypes, we're also interested in nice, comfortable- yet rugged- footwear. We stand for 8 - 10 hours a day, and by the end of the shift if you have shotty shoes, your dogs are barking. Or as a co-worker says, 'my hurt hurts!' I don't endorse any particular brand of footwear, as I've yet to find anything to rave about. My past 2 pairs of work shoes have been Sketchers, and I like the fact that they're very lightweight. I don't drag my feet as much by the end of the shift. There are some people who swear by those molded plastic shoes (who's name shall remain nameless because I loathe them so much), but aesthetically to me I'd rather wear the boxes they came in. I do have a pair of knock-offs, and it was just as supportive as a wooden slab velcroed to my feet. Not to mention those little air holes did nothing for ventilation. I think they're better suited for pools & gardening. Or part of a clown costume for Halloween.

Above all is comfort- you need to stand, stretch, contort, and weave around objects & co-workers for how ever long you clocked in for that day. But we can still keep it classy.

Welcome!

I am a certified Medical Laboratory Scientist (formerly known as a Medical Technologist) with the American Society for Clinical Pathology. I have been working in my hospital laboratory's clinical chemistry section for 3 wonderful years since finishing my bachelors degree.

In the clinical chemistry department, I analyze blood & other body fluids for: electrolytes, enzymes, hormones, proteins, and therapeutic as well as illicit drugs. Another important part of my job entails quality control for all tests run on our analyzers as well as performing preventative maintenance on all of our automated chemistry instruments. So, not only am I responsible for getting your doctor timely results that they need to treat you, but also that the results are as accurate as possible by maintaining our instruments according to the manufacturer's guidelines. I'm sort of a 'mechanic' when the instruments need some TLC, and an encyclopedia of reference ranges for nurses and physicians.

Clinical pathology is very diverse; in our hospital, our laboratories are divided as follows: Clinical Chemistry, Toxicology, Hematology, Microbiology, Immunology/Serology, and Blood Banking. Our laboratories must meet CAP, JCAHO, OSHA, FDA, and state requirements for the safe handling/storage/analysis of body fluids & chemicals. We have yearly inspections, and follow guidelines set forth by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute.

My hope is to make the general public more aware of all aspects of clinical pathology- thus helping to strengthen your knowledge about your own health & pique interest in our wide field of allied health.