The last few weeks have been exciting and fascinating in the Med Lab program. A number of things stood out for me.
In Microbiology, we had our first stool lab. I know, sounds super glamorous. But it was great, because it introduced a different approach to working up specimens, and it unveiled a little more of how the whole process works.
Each specimen we get in the lab will “travel” down a workflow pathway depending on several things: the specimen type (was it obtained from a wound, or an abscess, or stool?), the demographics (do they live in a small northern town or in metro-Vancouver?), the patient’s history (have they traveled recently, do they eat raw seafood?), and any special requests from the doctor. The information we receive with the specimen is essential in guiding the setup and subsequent isolation of organisms.
For example, a person who has diarrhea after taking a round of broad-spectrum antibiotics will have a different setup compared to a patient who reveals they diarrhea after eating raw oysters. In the first case it’s likely the patient has a C.diff infection, whereas in the second case it’s likely they have a Vibrio infection. Before we start we have an idea what we’re looking for, otherwise we might as well look for a needle in a haystack.
This week, we also got to see some more selective plates than we are used to seeing. We’ve learned about SMAC plates (which selects for the bad E.coli) and HEK plates (which selects for Salmonella and Shigella) before, but this is the first time we’ve worked on them in lab!
In Chemistry, we started urinalysis. I was excited to start this module, and so far I really like it! We’ve barely scratched the surface yet, but there are so many different things you can see under the microscope. Crystals are especially fascinating: there are so many different kinds!
Here’s a little peek into how urinalysis works:
- First, we do chemical analysis of the urine using manual and automated urinalysis strips. This tells us things about the urine such as pH, the presence of blood, and/or the presence of white blood cells.
- Next, we spin the urine in a centrifuge and do any confirmatory tests required for follow up of the urinalysis strips
- Finally, we use the sediment at the bottom of the centrifuged tube to analyze the urine microscopically.
Here’s were it gets interesting, because we then correlate everything we see under the microscope with the results from our urinalysis strips. So, if you have an alkaline urine, you will see a certain kind of crystal compared with if you have acidic urine.
In Hematology, we’ve been super busy learning about several kinds of anemias. The neatest one we’ve seen so far is Malaria. It falls under hemolytic anemias because the parasite ruptures the red blood cells, causing an increase in bilirubin in the blood, which in turn causes yellowing of the skin (jaundice).
The parasite is super fascinating to observe. It has several different stages of development. Some look like rings, others look like sea creatures, others like speckled dinosaur eggs.
So that’s some of what we’ve been up to in Level 3 so far. Thanks for reading!