Medical lab staff working in the shadows to help defeat COVID-19

In these past weeks, the medical lab has changed rapidly to address the COVID-19 outbreak. Our work is at the forefront of everyone’s minds — politicians, media, and members of the public — as we ramp up capacity to meet testing demands. Although it’s currently at the centre of the pandemic, many people don’t know what happens to their medical samples after they’re collected.

Our job goes beyond the naked eye: think of medical laboratory professionals as detectives who look inside the human body to investigate what’s making you sick. We study test tubes, agar plates, tissues from surgery. What we see looking at these samples under a microscope tells us about your medical condition; infection, cancer, pregnancy, heart attacks and more. We can tell if the medicine you’ve been prescribed is working, what kind of blood you need in a transfusion and if it’s safe to receive treatment.

Lab professionals are going into work suited up in PPE, drawing blood from infected patients, handling infected samples. However, COVID-19 just adds to the existing pressure of being a lab professional. We face infectious diseases and work with hazardous substances daily and are already working to respond to emergencies on top of our regular lab work.

The emergency department calls. Three trauma patents just arrived plus a possible cardiac arrest. Another call — it’s the maternity ward, a baby is in distress. A few moments later, the phone rings again — the intensive care unit says a patient needs blood work done right away. Then we hear from the operating room — one of their patients going through surgery is bleeding and needs a transfusion.

We’re not only scientists; we’re also engineers. Before samples can be analyzed, we must ensure instruments are accurate. This means daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance routines to ensure continuous flow of specimens with quality results. The instruments act up, interrupting testing so we can investigate and remedy the malfunction. If the repair is beyond our scope, an engineer must be called in.

To maintain quality, each laboratory adheres to an accreditation program and must meet a total of 465 standards through strict policies and procedures. Competency must also be maintained — all staff need to be trained and updated through continuing education.

Ensuring quality results requires all instruments and tests are validated prior to implementation to ensure they’re operating within expected limits, a complex process which often takes months. Laboratory teams have brought in new testing for COVID-19 in weeks instead. Ensuring all quality standards were in place, staff were trained on the new technology to ensure transmission of quality results in a timely fashion, while still performing day-to-day testing.

For a laboratory professional every sample — blood, fluids, tissues, swabs — is a patient.

Laboratories are facing challenging times. About 44 per cent of the workforce is eligible to retire in four to eight years and there aren’t enough new graduates to replace them.

We’re creative with scheduling to ensure quality results are still released. However, the elastic can only be stretched so far. As are approach the 1-million mark in COVID-19 tests, we are quickly reaching breaking point.

Even though you may not see us, we are there when you need us the most. Working in the background, maybe hidden, but never silent. Our quality work speaks loudly on our behalf.