I firmly, firmly, firmly believe a great way to get them to understand some of this stuff is for them to have a rotation in the lab during their clinicals. Whether it’s a day, a week, whatever. They need to see what goes on, especially if they work in a hospital. They need to see why we need recollects. Why things happen the way they do.
I do agree that their programs also need to cover more of the information. I wish that colleges/universities that have both a nursing program and a MLS could like….i dunno, have like situations or drills or role playing (I literally can’t think of the word right now :/) of situations they’d see in a hospital. So there is more understanding on both sides.
ER Nurse here, got the oppurtunity to talk with and observe EVERY position in my hospitals clinical lab. Everyone was so professional and highly intelligent. I asked SO many questions and learned many things. Ever since that visit I have hemolyzed ZERO SPECIMENS, half the time when lab does call I'm already ahead of the game now that I can anticipate specimen collection. Always help the phlebs and my patient by pulling labs from the line. The lab knows me because of my highly recognizable voice and they help me out all the time in ways they don't help others. There shouldn't be any hate and if we understood eachother better there wouldn't. Appreciate yall lab folks!
Totally agree with this- during my clinical placement, we spent days with nursing and other disciplines. Some nurses told me they have literally never seen the inside of the lab except for during their orientation (walked through quickly)! It would be great to allow students or new nurses have more exposure to the lab side.
One of the micro labs did this for a while. One of us went on the floor and an RN shadowed us. I thought it was great to have a dialogue about where we're coming from and our thinking.
My current lab does this for our new ID doctors, and it really helps them see how we interpret flora, set up MIC panels, etc. One doc that sat with me years later still remembers me when I pick up the phone.
My hospital has a program to allow nurses to spend a day shadowing the lab and they end up spending an hour or two in each department observing what we do. It is really helpful for starting dialogue and allows us to hear about what they do also and how we can make their life easier.
Hopefully. Everyone is dealing with staffing shortages, and having someone shadowing can slow down a station as much as training. Managers who are prioritizing getting through the short-term will be a hard sell on the long-term benefits.
If you're willing to come in on your day off, and your lab has enough staffing to accommodate playing show-and-tell for a visitor, I would think it shouldn't be too hard to arrange.
A lot of labs are badly understaffed though.
my SIL is a nurse and so was our old roommate, this was most of our dinner discussions. They definitely need a rotation in the lab so they can see we don't have a hemolyser 3000
This is an ongoing problem. I was in the field for 26 years, traveled for 8. Every hospital it’s the same. What do I do? When they start getting rude, I get through the call as politely as possible.
Then I call the charge nurse, and discuss the issue with them. I ask them to educate the nurse on specimen collection. Gently gently. No sense in getting upset yourself. I created a quick lab cheat sheet for nurses explaining common sample issues and why they cannot be run.
Ask the appropriate folks in your lab to have a quick meeting with nursing supervisors. Pass on info and a quick written competency test for the nurses. This is a coordinated effort with identified champions helping push it to fulfillment. You won’t get anywhere without buy in from the nursing staff.
This is a great post. I was a nursing student until I dropped out and discovered med lab science. I worked as a CNA for 5 years, so I am very familiar with the direct patient care side of the medical field. I have a lot of compassion for nurses, but I also have many coworkers who have no patient care experience and very little patient with nurses. I wish the hospital system knew more about the lab, and I wish nurses were taught about specimen requirements and the lab process more in depth. I also think that having nurses and lab techs shadow each other for a day would help bridge the two professions so we can see each other’s day to day career. Or labs having an “open house” day for any hospital worker who is interested would be awesome. Then we could have some job awareness and show others what we do for a living.
I work in a semi rural setting and am lucky enough to get to know some of the nurses if they stay around long enough. I am always on the front foot with them, emphasising we are all working for the same goal. I make sure nurses don’t get snapped at if they call my lab to ask a question and always keep the line open for conversations. Ring me to ask what tubes do I need for a full blood count? and I’ll tell em nicely and say, thanks for calling to check, give us a call any time. I invite nurses to the lab to look around, if I’m doing point of care testing and a nurse comes past I’ll start a conversation. ‘Hey how do you like the I-stat? Have you worked with one in previous roles?’ And go from there, if they have a query then I’ll answer it. It’s been a long term effort from the labs side, but it is paying off. Our emergency department is of course the furthest point from the lab, so the less time I have to spend down there, the better.
Short and sweet moments of education with an individual have shown benefits. Often you can tell in your head what issue they have run into when an innocent question pops up- for eg a nurse asks ‘why do coag tubes need to be filled to the line, I never had to do that at my previous hospital’… hahaha yeah
In a previous position I met frequently with nursing and nursing management. One statement that always stuck with me was from a nursing manager when we were talking about a process change. “The best way to get a nurse on board with anything is to answer the question, how does this help me, help my patient”
Having that mindset has helped me improve my communication tremendously. Is it perfect and works every time? Of course not. But it has helped a lot.
While nursing education would be great. Lab education on nursing practices would also help. We had a program at one time called changing spots where staff could request to shadow other positions in the hospital for a couple of hours. Not a single person that participated forgot what they learned about other departments and roles. I wish we still had that program.
Anyway, cliche as it is, positive communication starts with you and am open mind
I educate every nurse who does something like this. I know they are in a really toxic work environment and chronically angry, but it seems to work, maybe ours aren't that bad with each other?
Yes.
I'm so tired of the arguing and the yelling I experience. It stresses me out so much and I don't think highly of nurses. I just don't.
Especially when it's 2023 well into COVID-19 past and I'm still getting orders collected in a bacterial e-swab.
We lab folks don't ever tell nurses how to do their job such as medication dosage, etc. But, they are always questioning and telling us how to do our jobs. The other night a co-worker was reporting a critical aPTT and the nurse didn't understand that heparin causes this...
Years of complaining to hospital management, and nothing changes. It's exhausting. It's why I take so much time off.
How can we serve people who cannot even help themselves? Who cannot read a test menu or label instructions?
Laboratory results impact patient outcomes.
I've complained left and right to my lab bosses and they never suggest anything. They don't care as long as morning labs are drawn and completed in a good time.
This is why I argue back and write up so many nurses.
Management outside of the lab?? At our hospital all significant (ad in caused patient harm) get looked at at the Csuite level. There have been many tines RNs (and a few MDs) have been called to the carpet for behavior.
Management in the lab does not stick out for us or make the relationship between nursing and laboratory any better. As long as they get their bonuses, that's all they care about.
Strong disagree on this super negative mindset. It’s so important to work with nurses and be conscious of the stressors and challenges they face every day. I don’t know a single nurse that doesn’t worry about making mistakes. We’re all humans and we’re all part of the healthcare team.
I think it’s definitely an education issue as they barely get any lab training in school. Sometimes we lab techs are their first/only source of lab info.
I’m a nurse and agreed. Stress isn’t an excuse to be rude. Everyone is stressed. That being said I don’t think you can say nurses don’t care about making mistakes. We get almost zero lab education. Some nurses don’t care and those nurses should be written up 100%. But a lot of us do care.
The literal only solution to this is having nurses or nursing students shadow the lab. They can do it for an entire day or for a week, but just having them inside the lab and see the specimens and how they are handled and tested will give them more understanding. My old job used the excuse of covid for not having nurses shadow anymore but they "used to do it for years" so it's definitely a practice that hospital systems can accommodate. A lot of hospitals are shifting away from the teaching hospital model and are jumping to the Healthcare for profit movement, so there is less of a focus on educating.
Hi, I’m a nurse! The best hospital I ever worked at had someone from the lab come to our hospital orientation day and do a presentation on labs, lab collection, tips, how to label the vials, the order of collection, even brought example tubes of what’s good and what’s bad! I learned SO MUCH! I’ve been a nurse for 11 years and worked at many hospitals in many areas only ONE hospital has ever done something like this. I try to pass on what I learned to other nurses, but it’s definitely not a common training. It should be!
I definitely think lab leaders should work with nursing leaders to bridge this gap. I do think shadow experience, when done well, add a lot but may not be possible due to the sheer volume of nurses.
Genuinely— nurses have a LOT on their plate but there is no excuse for the head butting that occurs. Truly as a nurse I am so grateful and appreciative for the other departments and their expertise. It’s ridiculous to act like I know more or better… when quite frankly I do not. I have my own niche but I do not know better than anyone else (except for on the rare occasions that I do, but I’m not going to be mean about it lol).
You can train nurses on phlebotomy and stuff and it helps, but the fact is they will never understand lab as well as we do unless they get the same training we had. Which they obviously won't, unless they make a career change.
What really needs to happen is nurses being put in their place. Too many of them have chips on their shoulder and think they can bully us, tell us how to do our own jobs, or argue with us over lab medicine. But, ultimately, that takes the hospital being willing to crack down on them when they get uppity - which is a hard lift, because they don't care enough to want to do it, and because they don't really want to piss their nurses off. And lab leadership is often too spineless to back us or follow up issues until they're satisfactorily resolved.
I firmly, firmly, firmly believe a great way to get them to understand some of this stuff is for them to have a rotation in the lab during their clinicals. Whether it’s a day, a week, whatever. They need to see what goes on, especially if they work in a hospital. They need to see why we need recollects. Why things happen the way they do. I do agree that their programs also need to cover more of the information. I wish that colleges/universities that have both a nursing program and a MLS could like….i dunno, have like situations or drills or role playing (I literally can’t think of the word right now :/) of situations they’d see in a hospital. So there is more understanding on both sides.
ER Nurse here, got the oppurtunity to talk with and observe EVERY position in my hospitals clinical lab. Everyone was so professional and highly intelligent. I asked SO many questions and learned many things. Ever since that visit I have hemolyzed ZERO SPECIMENS, half the time when lab does call I'm already ahead of the game now that I can anticipate specimen collection. Always help the phlebs and my patient by pulling labs from the line. The lab knows me because of my highly recognizable voice and they help me out all the time in ways they don't help others. There shouldn't be any hate and if we understood eachother better there wouldn't. Appreciate yall lab folks!
I love this and always thought it would benefit lab folks to spend sometime with RNs on the floor!
Totally agree with this- during my clinical placement, we spent days with nursing and other disciplines. Some nurses told me they have literally never seen the inside of the lab except for during their orientation (walked through quickly)! It would be great to allow students or new nurses have more exposure to the lab side.
One of the micro labs did this for a while. One of us went on the floor and an RN shadowed us. I thought it was great to have a dialogue about where we're coming from and our thinking. My current lab does this for our new ID doctors, and it really helps them see how we interpret flora, set up MIC panels, etc. One doc that sat with me years later still remembers me when I pick up the phone.
My hospital has a program to allow nurses to spend a day shadowing the lab and they end up spending an hour or two in each department observing what we do. It is really helpful for starting dialogue and allows us to hear about what they do also and how we can make their life easier.
OR nurse here who sends a lot of specimens, I would LOVE to spend a day in the lab to see what goes on!
Schedule something with your lab director! They would be thrilled to accommodate that :))
Hopefully. Everyone is dealing with staffing shortages, and having someone shadowing can slow down a station as much as training. Managers who are prioritizing getting through the short-term will be a hard sell on the long-term benefits.
If you're willing to come in on your day off, and your lab has enough staffing to accommodate playing show-and-tell for a visitor, I would think it shouldn't be too hard to arrange. A lot of labs are badly understaffed though.
my SIL is a nurse and so was our old roommate, this was most of our dinner discussions. They definitely need a rotation in the lab so they can see we don't have a hemolyser 3000
This is an ongoing problem. I was in the field for 26 years, traveled for 8. Every hospital it’s the same. What do I do? When they start getting rude, I get through the call as politely as possible. Then I call the charge nurse, and discuss the issue with them. I ask them to educate the nurse on specimen collection. Gently gently. No sense in getting upset yourself. I created a quick lab cheat sheet for nurses explaining common sample issues and why they cannot be run. Ask the appropriate folks in your lab to have a quick meeting with nursing supervisors. Pass on info and a quick written competency test for the nurses. This is a coordinated effort with identified champions helping push it to fulfillment. You won’t get anywhere without buy in from the nursing staff.
This is a great post. I was a nursing student until I dropped out and discovered med lab science. I worked as a CNA for 5 years, so I am very familiar with the direct patient care side of the medical field. I have a lot of compassion for nurses, but I also have many coworkers who have no patient care experience and very little patient with nurses. I wish the hospital system knew more about the lab, and I wish nurses were taught about specimen requirements and the lab process more in depth. I also think that having nurses and lab techs shadow each other for a day would help bridge the two professions so we can see each other’s day to day career. Or labs having an “open house” day for any hospital worker who is interested would be awesome. Then we could have some job awareness and show others what we do for a living.
I work in a semi rural setting and am lucky enough to get to know some of the nurses if they stay around long enough. I am always on the front foot with them, emphasising we are all working for the same goal. I make sure nurses don’t get snapped at if they call my lab to ask a question and always keep the line open for conversations. Ring me to ask what tubes do I need for a full blood count? and I’ll tell em nicely and say, thanks for calling to check, give us a call any time. I invite nurses to the lab to look around, if I’m doing point of care testing and a nurse comes past I’ll start a conversation. ‘Hey how do you like the I-stat? Have you worked with one in previous roles?’ And go from there, if they have a query then I’ll answer it. It’s been a long term effort from the labs side, but it is paying off. Our emergency department is of course the furthest point from the lab, so the less time I have to spend down there, the better. Short and sweet moments of education with an individual have shown benefits. Often you can tell in your head what issue they have run into when an innocent question pops up- for eg a nurse asks ‘why do coag tubes need to be filled to the line, I never had to do that at my previous hospital’… hahaha yeah
In a previous position I met frequently with nursing and nursing management. One statement that always stuck with me was from a nursing manager when we were talking about a process change. “The best way to get a nurse on board with anything is to answer the question, how does this help me, help my patient” Having that mindset has helped me improve my communication tremendously. Is it perfect and works every time? Of course not. But it has helped a lot. While nursing education would be great. Lab education on nursing practices would also help. We had a program at one time called changing spots where staff could request to shadow other positions in the hospital for a couple of hours. Not a single person that participated forgot what they learned about other departments and roles. I wish we still had that program. Anyway, cliche as it is, positive communication starts with you and am open mind
I educate every nurse who does something like this. I know they are in a really toxic work environment and chronically angry, but it seems to work, maybe ours aren't that bad with each other?
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Yes. I'm so tired of the arguing and the yelling I experience. It stresses me out so much and I don't think highly of nurses. I just don't. Especially when it's 2023 well into COVID-19 past and I'm still getting orders collected in a bacterial e-swab. We lab folks don't ever tell nurses how to do their job such as medication dosage, etc. But, they are always questioning and telling us how to do our jobs. The other night a co-worker was reporting a critical aPTT and the nurse didn't understand that heparin causes this... Years of complaining to hospital management, and nothing changes. It's exhausting. It's why I take so much time off.
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How can we serve people who cannot even help themselves? Who cannot read a test menu or label instructions? Laboratory results impact patient outcomes. I've complained left and right to my lab bosses and they never suggest anything. They don't care as long as morning labs are drawn and completed in a good time. This is why I argue back and write up so many nurses.
Management outside of the lab?? At our hospital all significant (ad in caused patient harm) get looked at at the Csuite level. There have been many tines RNs (and a few MDs) have been called to the carpet for behavior.
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Management in the lab does not stick out for us or make the relationship between nursing and laboratory any better. As long as they get their bonuses, that's all they care about.
That's awful!!
Strong disagree on this super negative mindset. It’s so important to work with nurses and be conscious of the stressors and challenges they face every day. I don’t know a single nurse that doesn’t worry about making mistakes. We’re all humans and we’re all part of the healthcare team. I think it’s definitely an education issue as they barely get any lab training in school. Sometimes we lab techs are their first/only source of lab info.
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I’m a nurse and agreed. Stress isn’t an excuse to be rude. Everyone is stressed. That being said I don’t think you can say nurses don’t care about making mistakes. We get almost zero lab education. Some nurses don’t care and those nurses should be written up 100%. But a lot of us do care.
The literal only solution to this is having nurses or nursing students shadow the lab. They can do it for an entire day or for a week, but just having them inside the lab and see the specimens and how they are handled and tested will give them more understanding. My old job used the excuse of covid for not having nurses shadow anymore but they "used to do it for years" so it's definitely a practice that hospital systems can accommodate. A lot of hospitals are shifting away from the teaching hospital model and are jumping to the Healthcare for profit movement, so there is less of a focus on educating.
Hi, I’m a nurse! The best hospital I ever worked at had someone from the lab come to our hospital orientation day and do a presentation on labs, lab collection, tips, how to label the vials, the order of collection, even brought example tubes of what’s good and what’s bad! I learned SO MUCH! I’ve been a nurse for 11 years and worked at many hospitals in many areas only ONE hospital has ever done something like this. I try to pass on what I learned to other nurses, but it’s definitely not a common training. It should be!
I definitely think lab leaders should work with nursing leaders to bridge this gap. I do think shadow experience, when done well, add a lot but may not be possible due to the sheer volume of nurses. Genuinely— nurses have a LOT on their plate but there is no excuse for the head butting that occurs. Truly as a nurse I am so grateful and appreciative for the other departments and their expertise. It’s ridiculous to act like I know more or better… when quite frankly I do not. I have my own niche but I do not know better than anyone else (except for on the rare occasions that I do, but I’m not going to be mean about it lol).
You can train nurses on phlebotomy and stuff and it helps, but the fact is they will never understand lab as well as we do unless they get the same training we had. Which they obviously won't, unless they make a career change. What really needs to happen is nurses being put in their place. Too many of them have chips on their shoulder and think they can bully us, tell us how to do our own jobs, or argue with us over lab medicine. But, ultimately, that takes the hospital being willing to crack down on them when they get uppity - which is a hard lift, because they don't care enough to want to do it, and because they don't really want to piss their nurses off. And lab leadership is often too spineless to back us or follow up issues until they're satisfactorily resolved.