Steemit Engagement Challenge S3-W1|All About My Job : The Laboratory, The Heart of the Hospital

Hello to all, it's a great thing to be here to talk about my job! Infact, this is my first engagement contest entry and i hope to make the most out of it. In some lines, I'll tell you all about my job as a laboratory scientist and technologist.

^{Designed by me using Canva}

---

The Life of a Laboratory Technnician

---

I am a lab technician, a person who runs various tests in the Laboratory of every hospital. Aside from running tests, i also analyze and interpret the results in a language which the doctor will know and prescribe the appropriate drugs to give the patient.

At my place of work, the first thing you would need to know is how to collect samples (blood, stool, sputum, skin, vaginal etc). Most times we use the blood because we can use different markers in the blood to detect a specific disease or ailment.

The first step in my laboratory is to make the patient feel comfortable by engaging a discussion with the patient and making this patient relaxed inorder not to collect blood from an anxious patient which will later give a false positive result because of the adrenaline produced by this patient which will increase his/her blood pressure. Then i do a venipuncture (process of collecting blood from the arm). After the collection i centrifuge the blood and it's all ready for all the tests to be carried out.

^{The Centrifuge}

There are different kinds of tests depending on the doctor's prescription, i carry them out using either serum, plasma or whole blood.

There are some cases where i have to collect vaginal specimens and this test then will be subjected to staining to know if the amount of bacteria flora in the vagina is normal, or low or high. These are the activities i carry out on a daily in my little lab. And below is the lists of tests we carry out with their respective prices

^{what3words link}

Some of the routine tests we run are typhoid tests, malaria test and H. pylori tests.

^{Widal Test and H. pylori tests}

---

Some Problems Faced at my Workplace

---

• The first problem i encounter daily is the language barrier problem. It is mostly Muslims who visit the clinic and also because of the socio economic crisis, there's an influx of people from the affected Northwest and Southwest areas of Cameroon. Coupled with the language, most women don't like when it is a man who collects their vaginal samples. It kind of goes against their religious beliefs and also most women are shy that a young man Sees their private part.

• The laboratory where i is a small one, and it stops me from doing certain movements at a time. And i can't isolate a bacterial culture there too.

• Power outage problems too are alarming. We are in Cameroon and if we make a day without power outage then it calls for celebration. I use machines to carryout tests. And i mostly use the light microscope and centrifuge too. It poses a serious problem to render results on time and make sure species are kept intact. Though we have a solar energy panel, it isn't that powerful to accommodate all these machines in the lab.

---

My Greatest Hope

---

It is very interesting to be able to know and master how to manually run these tests, but it'll be even more fun if some of them were automated. Especially the blood collection procedure. We are in Africa and there are certain peoe who have a lot of fats on the body. It's going to be a great deal if we find a way to easily find a person's vein to be punctured to collect blood samples.

The medical field is a good one, and i dream for the laboratory is to have more efficient and awesome machines which will ease the work of the lab technician to perform his duties effectively.

As of now, we record our data in books and it would be beautiful if the lab had a machine and a database where all information is kept well for easy search in case of any student coming to conduct a research or for counts to be made.

---

---

Conclusion

---

Being a Laboratory Technician is a cool job, you do many fun and amazing tests which allow your brain to work efficiently, you help to solve many health challenges faced by patients.
Infact without the laboratory, there is no hospital because wherever the problem is known, it is already half solved.

The laboratory is the heartbeat of the hospital and without it, the doctors are dumbfounded on what to do. What a great thing to be a medical personnel.🤗

I invite my very good friends @wase1234, @blessinglepahwah and @wandass73 to partake in this engagement challenge.

---

Best regards,
@majerius

'25% beneficiary to @null'