Invisible, Essential and Exact
The lab never feels like the front line of healthcare that patients see.
There are no patients, only their samples. No frantic hurry in individuals’ voices, no rushed and stressful emergencies around the corner. In contrast, it’s quiet, calm and steady.
Machines hum softly like white noise in the background. Blue-nitrile- gloved hands, rustling with exact precision, handle racks of labelled tubes, most from patients who don’t think twice about where their samples go who handles them
For most patients, the sample tests are just a one time procedure. You go home and it’s out of sight, out of mind. But after the quick procedure, we enter a world that is Invisible, Essential and Exact.
“Have you ever gotten your blood taken?” Presley Allon, a medical laboratory technologist, asks.
“Where do you think that blood goes?”
She smiles slightly before answering her own question: “That’s what I do.”
Allon is a 20-year-old medical laboratory sciences student. In her stylized scrubs and fun hairstyles, she feels more comfortable examining under a microscope than face-to-face treatments at a patient’s bedside.
Most people link healthcare with who they see the most, the nurses and doctors. But Allon is currently studying and training for the role that very few patients think about, see or even understand.
“I can totally understand why people don’t know about us,” she says.
“I don’t really have any qualms against people that don’t think about it or know about it.”
The environment in the lab sustains a degree of invisibility, yet it’s behind treatments, diagnoses, and the saving of many lives. A true essential element that a frontline healthcare patient sees, would stumble. It’s something Allon and her colleagues come to understand without bitterness towards the public.
Allon’s decision to experience the world of the lab wasn’t caused by a cinematic, movie-like coming-of-age calling. It was a choice that made sense for her, but an experience had an opinion and made it very clear.
During her first practicum rotation at the hospital, she fainted while shadowing a bedside blood collection on a patient.
“I’ve never fainted before. I’ve never had any issues like that,” Allon recalls from memory.
“I have no problem with blood, needles; I had spent that entire week collecting blood from people, but for some reason, that first one in the hospital really got to me,”
The face-to-face side of the medical world wasn’t for her, whether she liked it or not. But rather than pushing her away from healthcare altogether, it guided her to the path she’s on today.
The lab can be overlooked, but its standards behind the scenes are anything but laid-back. Exact precision is not just strongly urged; it must be constant at every step. A level of detail that commands undivided focus during the repetitive responsibility of the job.
“An extra drop here and there. You might think, whatever, but it actually can affect results sometimes,” she explains.
Every single measurement and step must be sure and precise, without any ounce of doubt. Start again. Hours pass, but the expectation never changes, accuracy, every time, because errors affect real people outside the lab, not just on paper.
“I would rather take the extra few minutes that it takes to redo it, then number one, have the test not work or number two, give out erroneous results that could actually really affect the patient,” Allon states.
Regardless of the day’s repetitive routines the lab might receive a test that is simple at first but can quickly become complex. In transfusion medicine, some test results that are supposed to match and align sometimes won’t.
Mismatched tests can be a sign of concealed conditions, complications, or treatments that trigger further examination, instantly switching the environment from mechanical to analytical.
Despite working with patients’ personal bodily fluids throughout several hours a day, none of the laboratory technologists are allowed to ‘know’ the patient behind the sample. Confidential customs can create an ethical boundary and often feel isolating.
“We’re not allowed to talk about it,” she says earnestly.
They are not allowed to contact patients personally, share details with others outside the lab, or even to work on samples from peers from their own personal lives.
“I’m always remembering that they’re not just tubes, there’s people behind them and it’s important to treat them as precious samples and get the results out quickly,” said Allon.
Apart from the lab, the work ombres into customary life. The work environment is like any other workplace, chatting with your co-workers and joking around, Allon notes, elements you would find anywhere else, completely leaving behind the tense assumptions people may presume.
At clock-out, Allon initiates her ‘routine’ to decompress from a day of undivided focus and being an essential part of healthcare. From focusing on her self-care to mentally separating from the pressure at the lab and really taking the time to reset completely.
Medical laboratory technology and life back at home is the balance Allon has been seeking from the start, a career she can leave behind at the end of the day. Yet, she continues to carry it with her out of interest rather than stress.
“I can go to the lab and do my thing and leave and just leave it all there,” she says.
“I think I’m lucky because I found something that I’m so passionate about that I almost don’t want to leave it all there,”
After many months of training, working and studying, the intense stress and tension that filled her earlier days have softened. Learning new systems, exploring unfamiliar environments and adjusting to strict expectations have just become part of her average day at the lab.
With all this new experience, Allon has found a clear vision of the health professional she strives to be, not just one who completes all her tasks with precision, but someone who is diverse and up to date across several branches in the lab and is a supportive team player to those around her.
“Being somebody that people want to work around,” Allon explains.
“I would never, when I’m training somebody, get upset with them for not knowing how to do something.”
Because in an environment where every move matters, teamwork equally matters just as much, if not more.
Patients will likely never see what goes on behind the scenes. They won’t see their samples in rows beside others, the precise tests, or even the repetitive inspections for the diagnostic processes. They’ll never know who the professionals overseeing everything are.
In the future, another diagnosis is made, or a treatment is decided for a patient, the hidden work done out of sight by people you won’t know in your lifetime, yet whose life-saving precision makes all the difference.
Invisible, Essential, Exact.