generalist – Page 2 – Lablogatory

A COVID Reflection

Usually, I talk about some of the more administrative happenings in the laboratory world (accreditation, competency, etc.). Today, however, as there is seemingly a glimmer of light at the end of the nation’s pandemic tunnel, I thought I would reflect on what we have collectively experienced.

Like much of the nation, it has been a difficult journey for laboratorians. It has been particularly trying for those who were asked, who were required, to rise up and meet the unprecedented challenges of the times while suffering from the same burdens of fear, uncertainty, and physical ailments as those they were serving.

Dying Alone

One year ago, my uncle died from COVID-19. He died alone and afraid in the nursing home where he never wanted to be. We visited him after being given special permission from the president of the company operating the nursing home. After being told about how unusual it was to be allowed to see him, we dressed in full PPEs and went into his room. We found him curled in a fetal position, dead and cold to the touch. It was so unfair.

I think about all of the laboratorians who had to endure similar or worst experiences: those who lost close family members and even those who themselves suffered through the disease.

Unseen Warriors

Laboratorians have always been the silent warriors in the life-long battle to defeat pain and disease. More often, nurses and doctors received public gifts of admiration and praise for their service to patients. With quiet satisfaction, laboratory technologists, technicians, and support personnel are dedicated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to providing the information on which 70% of medical decisions are based. Information that no other group of professionals can provide.

I think about all of the effort and skill required in the mad rush to set up tents and collection sites needed across the nation. And then, too, there were the laboratories needing to scale up testing or create entirely new testing areas with new instruments and new tests kits. The chaos was magnified by constantly changing guidelines, reagent shortages, and a lack of trained personnel.

Amid all the confusion, misinformation, and anger, laboratorians were themselves experiencing disease, death, and social isolation. Yet still, they delivered the results the nation needed to understand the pandemic’s depth and breadth.

Needless Death

Now the Delta variant has taken hold just when the nation thought the disease, if not bested, had at least been brought under some semblance of control. Unfortunately, the refusal of many to get vaccinated contributes to the virus’s persistence. More will suffer, and more will die.

How many needless deaths will the nation have to experience? Will there ever be a point when everyone who can be vaccinated will be? Or, two years later, will we be mourning preventable COVID-19 deaths. Will we still have to watch our loved ones perish with a tube down their throat, or worst, alone in a room far away surrounded by cold walls and quiet indifference?

Sigh.

Regardless of where this pandemic leads or how the nation reacts, laboratorians will continue to remain steadfast in their dedication to their profession and their patients. We have often considered ourselves the stepchild of the healthcare industry because, despite the criticality of what we do, we go unnoticed and unremarked on as long as we deliver the results our patients need. We are okay with that.

We are also tired and worn.

Conclusion

Thanks, fellow laboratorian, for reading this minor soliloquy of frustration and sadness. I will probably be back next quarter discussing inspections, competency, or some other administrative aspect of laboratory operations. I hope, also, to discuss how the nation has reached or is close to reaching the theoretical goal of herd immunity because of high vaccination levels. However, if I were honest, I know the likelihood of this happening is disappointingly low.

If you can get vaccinated, please do.

-Darryl Elzie, PsyD, MHA, MT(ASCP), CQA(ASQ), has been an ASCP Medical Technologist for over 30 years and has been performing CAP inspections for 15+ years. Dr. Elzie provides laboratory quality oversight for four hospitals, one ambulatory care center, and supports laboratory quality initiatives throughout the Sentara Healthcare system.

The Red Queen’s Gambit: Helping the Lab Avoid Burnout

In Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking Glass, Alice is being given a tour of Looking-Glass Land by the Red Queen when this happens:

Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying “Faster! Faster!” but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had not breath left to say so.

However, after running until Alice feels absolutely exhausted she looks around in surprise to find that they are exactly in the same place where they had begun.

Carroll, Lewis (1991) [1871]. “2: The Garden of Live Flowers”*. Through the Looking-Glass (The Millennium Fulcrum Edition 1.7 ed.). Project Gutenberg.*

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Laboratory medicine is one of many areas of healthcare where more is constantly expected to be done with less, where the inhabitants of our looking-glass land have to run as fast as we can just to maintain the status quo. Also like many areas of medicine, our already strained workforce suddenly became victims of an unprecedented global COVID-19 pandemic stressing and stretching our capabilities. The gamble then, is expecting members of our incredible laboratory medicine community to run so fast that they ultimately burn themselves out.

From the December 2020 New York Times article on laboratory workers in the time of COVID-19 titled, “‘Nobody Sees Us’: Testing-Lab Workers Strain Under Demand“:

Morale in the labs has flagged as the country continues to shatter records for caseloads, hospitalizations and deaths. The nation’s testing experts know these statistics better than anyone: They count the numbers themselves, sample by sample. But they are also easy targets of criticism and complaint.

“There is always this undercurrent of, it’s never good enough,” said Dr. Abbott, of Deaconess Hospital in Indiana. “It’s devastating. We’re working as hard as we can.”

In April 2020, just a few weeks after COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic, the April issue American Journal of Clinical Pathology opened with two timely editorials, one from Dr. Jeanette Guarner discussing the three emergent coronavirus diseases of the past two decades (SARS, MERS and COVID-19) and the next by Dr. Steven H Kroft titled “Well-Being, Burnout, and the Clinical Laboratory.”

In this issue were three different articles, the results of extensive surveys conducted by the ASCP to determine the job satisfaction, well-being and burnout prevalent among 1) pathologists, 2) pathology residents and fellows, and 3) laboratory professionals. Knowing now what clinical laboratories, leaders and trainees were about to go through thanks to COVID-19, made these publications about the stress and satisfaction felt by those in lab medicine was timely (if not grimly ironic).

What is shown in those excellent publications, and what we can only assume has become more true, is “burnout,” (the “combination of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and loss of sense of personal accomplishment”) prevalent in laboratory medicine, with the majority of pathologists, residents and fellows, and professionals reporting having experienced it if not experiencing it as an ongoing problem.

There is no single solution to burnout in the laboratory. As Dr. Kroft outlines in his editorial, these surveys can be seen as initial steps to understanding the problem and plotting potential courses forward (“a roadmap for what workplace landmines to try to avoid.”). But several meaningful pieces of data emerged from these surveys as well: Overwhelmingly, pathologists and lab professionals enjoy their work (91% and 86%) and feel valued by their colleagues (79% and 71%). Also telling is the fact that while well over 90% of laboratory professionals reported “a little bit of stress” to “a lot of stress,” 2/3rds of them reported feeling either “somewhat satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their jobs. Clearly, no one knows the value of laboratory medicine better than those of us doing it. But recognition and support coming from within the laboratory space should be seen as a good first step to acknowledging these contributions.

Recognition is needed from outside lab leadership as well, and especially should be accompanied by both stress-reducing measures (filling labor gaps, adequate compensation and benefits etc.) and opportunities to feel ownership and personal investment in the contributions we make to healthcare. Healthcare leaders, professional organizations, and all of those who were vocal supporters of labs’ contributions during the worst of the pandemic, should continue to advocate on behalf of laboratory staff’s well-being.

Even as vaccines and other mitigation efforts are providing more widespread pandemic relief in the United States, it’s clear that we are now through a COVID-19 looking glass. The lab was already running as fast as it could, but to get us to where we are now, many of us started running twice as fast. Hopefully we will both continue to run and also be supported in that ongoing race to stay where we are.

-Dr. Richard Davis, PhD, D(ABMM), MLS(ASCP)^CM is a clinical microbiologist and regional director of microbiology for Providence Health Care in Eastern Washington. A certified medical laboratory scientist, he received his PhD studying the tropical parasite Leishmania. He transitioned back to laboratory medicine (though he still loves parasites!), and completed a clinical microbiology fellowship at the University of Utah/ARUP Laboratories in Utah before accepting his current position. He is a 2020 ASCP 40 Under Forty Honoree.

TRANSforming Healthcare: The Role of The Laboratory

In 2006, an international group of human rights experts assembled in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to address patterns of discrimination and abuse of individuals related to sexual orientation and gender identity. This document, The Yogyakarta Principles: Principles on the application of

international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, has been widely accepted as setting the standards for fundamental human rights for all, with specific attention to sexual orientation and gender identify. It is worth studying, as it articulates rights in many domains of everyday life. Of direct relevance to our Profession are Principle #12, The Right to Work; Principle number #17, The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health; and Principle #18, Protection from Medical Abuses.¹It is the goal to “Adopt the policies, and programmes of education and training, necessary to enable persons working in the healthcare sector to deliver the highest attainable standard of healthcare to all persons, with full respect for each person’s sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Because the medical laboratory provides critical data for patient management, laboratory professionals and pathologists must be able to evaluate laboratory and biopsy results wisely and appropriately. Yet we often lack fundamental and essential information necessary to support optimal and personalized care for patients on cross-sex hormones.

The number of individuals who self-identify as transgender has risen significantly in the past decade. Transgender people face discrimination, harassment, abuse, and denial of legal rights. They often feel unsafe, and a high proportion face bullying at school or at work. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that about 2% of high school students in the U.S. identify as transgender; among them, 35% attempt suicide. Transgender adults are twice as likely of being homeless, four times more likely to live in poverty, four times as likely as being HIV-infected, and twice as likely to be unemployed compared to the general population.² Individuals without access to appropriate care may purchase hormones from unreliable sources, so that the dose, drug contents, and potential side-effects are poorly controlled or even toxic.

Healthcare systems often fail the transgender community. First, given the high rate of poverty, unemployment, and homelessness, access to basic health services is not available for many individuals. Second, even in those healthcare institutions that serve the uninsured, appropriate services are often lacking, including the absence of knowledgeable providers and the lack of cultural competency in the institution. The few academic hospitals with services and clinics oriented to serving transgender patients struggle to provide optimal care, because there are important gaps in knowledge regarding how best to care for transgender patients. Many health care clinics and professionals lack training in asking all patients “What pronouns do you prefer to use in referring to yourself?” This is a straightforward way to acknowledge gender diversity and sets the first stage of a potentially trusting relationship.

Examples abound regarding information gaps in managing patients on cross-sex hormones. For instance, there are only a handful of papers in the literature addressing care of elderly patients, and little is known about the risks or health benefits of long-term cross-sex hormone use. For children who elect to start puberty blockers so that their development in adolescence is more appropriate to their self-identified gender, long-term effects on bone health are poorly understood. A number of laboratory tests have different reference ranges for “men” and “women,” such as n-telopeptide as a marker of bone turnover. Most labs have not established appropriate reference ranges for patients on cross-sex hormones, nor are there good long-term studies to help guide management of bone health in this setting. And there may be times when the managing health care professionals do not realize that a patient is taking cross-sex hormones.

Patient identifiers are often incomplete. Many patients on cross-sex hormones have not had surgery to remove their gonads. Therefore, a trans-man can present to the Emergency Room with severe abdominal pain, but those managing his care may not suspect ovarian torsion, ectopic pregnancy, or other conditions of the fallopian tubes, ovaries, uterus, and cervix. Similarly, trans-women may have testes and prostates. Most patient registration systems lack the ability to record sex chromosomes and gender identity separately. Also, many individuals identify as non-binary; some are not taking cross-sex hormones at all. These factors affecting presentation are currently captured poorly. If at all, in the medical record but may have profound implications for care. Otherwise, implicit biases can adversely affect patient care.

Finally, we all have work to do to ensure that our patients and colleagues feel welcomed and respected in our labs, training programs, and hospitals. One important step is for each of us to gain self-awareness of our attitudes and biases, and to educate ourselves. A good starting place is Gupta’s article in Lab Medicine;³ another is the book Trans Bodies, Trans Selves by psychologist Laura Erickson-Schroth.⁴ Second, we must continue to foster inclusive workplaces, to stand up when we witness abuses or so-called “microagressions.” Third, we must work directly with patients to hear their concerns, and to provide the information needed regarding our lab results and pathology reports. We must respond to the gaps identified by our patients, do the research necessary to get better answers, and partner with other health care professionals to address the needs of our patients.

References

The Yogyakarta Principles. 2017. https://yogyakartaprinciples.org/
Meerwijk EL, Sevelius J. Transgender population size in the United States- a Meta-Regression of Population-Based Probability Samples. Am J Public Health 2017; 107(2):e1-e8. PMID 28075632
Gupta S, Imborek KL, Kraswoski MD. Challenges in transgender healthcare: the pathology perspective. Lab Medicine 2016;47:3;180–188.
Erickson-Schroth L. Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. 2014, Oxford University Press.

-Dr. Upton is board certified in Anatomic Pathology and Cytology and directed an autopsy service and forensic pathology fellowship program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. She has also practiced cytopathology and general surgical pathology, and has focused on genitourinary pathology, head and neck pathology, and gastroenterology (GI) and liver pathology. From 1982-85 and 1987-2002, Dr. Upton lived in Boston and taught at Tufts, Boston, and Harvard Universities. Since 2002, she has been at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she formerly directed the GI and Hepatic Pathology Service the Pathology Residency Program and the UW GI and Hepatic Pathology Fellowship. Currently Emeritus Professor of Pathology, she continues to practice Surgical Pathology, Autopsy Pathology, and Cytopathology, and she is one of the specialists at UW in the areas of GI, liver, and pancreatic pathology.

AIDS/HIV, the LGBTQ Community, and PRIDE Month: A Reflection

This reflection is dedicated with gratitude to the many LGBTQ activists who courageously engaged with politicians, scientists, and health leaders to advance the care of patients worldwide.

Forty years ago this month, near the end of my second year in Pathology Residency, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reported a small case series in its June 5, 1981 issue describing Pneumocystis pneumonia in 5 homosexual men. Soon there were additional reports of gay men affected by P. carinii (now renamed P. jiroveci) pneumonia, Kaposi sarcoma, and other unusual opportunistic infections. These riveting descriptions signaled a new disease entity, soon known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Initially some labeled AIDS “the gay disease” or “the gay cancer,” and the fear and stigma associated with AIDS led to discrimination, including evictions from housing, threats of evictions of clinics that served AIDS patients, and fear among some people of even casual contact with people affected by the disease.

At that time, I was training in a tight-knit cohort of residents who studied and socialized together. In those days we performed autopsies in street clothes, with only plastic aprons and gloves as “protective gear”- no masks, no face shields or goggles, no scrub suits. Within a few months of the MMR report, after AIDS fatalities in our training hospital, many of us went to the Autopsy room to observe the unusual findings at our gross organ review rounds, which were same-day examinations of fresh tissue. The next year, in the summer of 1982, I was married in a small ceremony that included only family and a few of my parents’ closest friends. Several years later two men who attended my wedding died of AIDS, and two of my fellow residents, and their partners, also died of AIDS.

By December, 1982, AIDS had been reported in a baby who had received multiple blood transfusions, and in January, 1983, AIDS was documented in women who had been sexual partners of men with AIDS and in people injecting drugs. These reports dispelled the idea that AIDS was unique to the gay community and suggested that the disease was likely due to an infectious agent that could be transmitted through blood, blood products, and sexual contact. Then in my Fellowship, still performing many autopsies, I was amazed at the dramatic change in protocols that appeared nearly overnight, as we were now required to use personal protective equipment for any work involving blood and fresh tissues. We gowned, double-gloved, wore masks and face shields, scrubs, and shoe covers when performing autopsies; and we were trained more diligently in managing needles and scalpel blades, as well as safety in procedures.

Pathologists and laboratory professionals soon learned to identify opportunistic infections that previously had been extremely rare outside the setting of severe immunosuppression. Multiple concurrent opportunistic infections were so common that it became second nature to scan any microscopic tissue section for cytomegalovirus, toxoplasmosis, fungal infection, atypical Mycobacteria, Kaposi sarcoma, and other findings. I learned from firsthand experience that there may not always be a single unifying diagnosis, in the sense that an immunocompromised patient may suffer with multiple infectious agents. By 1987, as a young attending pathologist on weekend call, I had to learn to perform by hand special rapid Gomori methenamine silver stains on any cases that required them. (As case numbers increased, the service began to employ histotechnologists to cover the weekends.)

Discovery of the causative infectious agent, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), by groups led by Montagnier (1983) and by Gallo (1984), was a critical step for the development of an accurate serologic test (1985) to detect pre-symptomatic disease. Publication of the retroviral sequence later facilitated the development of treatments, such as AZT, which was approved in 1987, and later to Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) in 1997. The development of effective antiretroviral therapies along with accurate and sensitive laboratory tests for HIV offered the opportunity to test and treat asymptomatic people before they developed severe immunosuppression and opportunistic infections.

This abbreviated summary greatly understates the devastating toll that the pandemic has wreaked and continues to wreak. Millions of young and middle-aged people across the globe, of all nationalities, in all communities, have died. Many children were orphaned. Those of my generation continue to mourn the losses of the people we loved and wonder in grief at the creativity and potential contributions also lost to our society and culture.

And, sadly, HIV rages on. Intravenous drug users and men who have sex with men continue to face discrimination and abuse in many countries. Access to preventive therapy and lifesaving (but not yet curative) antiretroviral treatment is still denied or unavailable to many patients. Efforts to develop an effective vaccine have been unsuccessful to date. Work to address the global nature of this pandemic have required international cooperation and coordinated efforts, that continue to this day. The current extensive global health activities of ASCP stem greatly from the Society’s early invitation to set up HIV testing for the PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) effort, which has also led to engagement in laboratory quality improvement efforts and workforce training worldwide. Finally, as we honor our LGBTQ colleagues, patients, and family members during PRIDE month, it is important to acknowledge that members of LGBTQ Community have been at the forefront of health care advocacy since the HIV pandemic first emerged. The tremendous progress in treatment, testing, and global strategies are results of their continuing energy, initially in the U.S. and now around the world to help other communities. We are all indebted to HIV/AIDS activists, such as the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP, who have engaged politically, staged public awareness-building efforts, and challenged political and health care leaders and research scientists to address the emergency posed by the infection. Their efforts led to greatly accelerated treatment trials and effective treatments, and they have fought to have drug costs lowered to increase access. They can take great PRIDE in their lasting contributions to help patients everywhere.

Critical Value

(No. Not that kind of critical value; your patient’s hemoglobin is absolutely fine…)

Hello again everyone! Back from a relevant and important case-study last month, I’d like to pivot to highlighting an important annual celebration that happens every May 6-12^th around the world: International Nurses’ Day.

I know, I know. This is a blog for medical laboratory professionals, what gives? We get lab week, they get nurses’ week…separate but equal? In my opinion, not exactly the best modus operandi for collaborative medicine. In fact, nursing and laboratory medicine have both had a rich, connected, and parallel history for decades and the professional intersections of their efforts is something to be celebrated!

A lot of current published literature focuses on nursing in the pre-analytical realm of specimen collection and processing. That’s totally fine, and quite important to diagnostic testing, but if you go back a few decades with me it’s clear to see we’re both frontline medical professionals—and that’s without a global viral pandemic!

Image 1. I’m sorry but the label needs to be dated and initialed at bedside—KIDDING. That happens a lot I’m sure (I would know), but nurses and medical laboratory scientists (technologists) have been counterparts for decades. The present is no different. We are two parts of a strong interdisciplinary, collaborative effort to improve healthcare for our patients. After all, we’re always #StrongerTogether. (Source: Laboratory Medicine, June 1970)

In the very first issue of Laboratory Medicine¸ one of ASCP’s main journals, an article discussed the critical communication between nursing and the laboratory. The bottom line (from 1970)? Doctors and nurses might use “stat” too much, and medical technologists are very busy folks—has anything changed? In another piece in the same journal from 1984, the topic of MLS (then MT) recognition was examined. Almost 14 years apart, this article highlighted that the lab wished for recognition, and that doctors and nurses valued their MT’s experience and knowledge, despite their work behind the scenes. Fast forward to the present, professional societies like ASCLS have established national celebrations of our hard work with Medical Laboratory Professional’s Week in April. In May, the International Council of Nurses (and our American Association of Nursing) promotes Nurses’ Week. Our super-hero themed celebration of diagnostic excellence and commitment is matched by their theme of nursing the world back to health. The World Health Assembly designated 2020 as the year of the nurse for obvious reasons. None of us would be able to thrive, survive, or work in or out of healthcare without nurses. So for this year’s Nurses’ Week, Nurses’ Day, or even the Year of the Nurse, this pathology postgraduate-trainee is happy to celebrate our clinical friends and colleagues.

Image 2. Melizza, Nataliya, Donna, and Roksana are the nurses that manage Loyola’s robust apheresis clinic service. I don’t think it would run without them. They effectively demonstrate that nursing is critical across any specialty, and patient safety and outcomes are directly related to the care they receive.

Significant parts of pathology and laboratory medicine rely heavily on nurses. In transfusion medicine, you wouldn’t be able to have any significant apheresis clinic activity without the compassion and attention of nurses. Clinical Pathologists really lean on the knowledge, skill, talent, grace, compassion, and dedication of the nurses that care for patients receiving this highly specific and specialized treatment modality. Think about how other “interventional pathology” specialties like cytopathology or hematopathology would suffer without the commitment of nurses to keep our patients safe during a fine-needle aspiration, or bone marrow collection.

I write a lot about our work in pathology and laboratory medicine, from bench to bedside, but considering our nursing colleagues:

Nurses are kind.
Nurses are brilliant.
Nurses are skilled.
Nurses work in all kinds of roles, jobs, and settings.
Whether they work in an office, clinic, or hospital unit, care for you or a loved one, close the learning gaps for a medical student or resident, champion for better outcomes for one patients or thousands or people at once; our lives are all better for it. Their work never ends, and our need for them never will.

Image 3. Mini-brag: my wife (who has secretly appeared in a few ASCP-related media as she accompanies me to meetings—and even roundtables!) is a nurse and a fantastic one. An INF Top 40 Under Forty Nursing Leader, a former community-based health clinic non-profit chief of staff, an internationally renowned lecturer on emergency and disaster mitigation strategies, and a very important Chicago region disaster response manager who’s inches from finishing her DNP in Public Health so, like, what am I even doing…?

I obviously see the value and impact of nursing every day. Doesn’t hurt that I’m surrounded by great ones at work and at home.

Happy (belated) Nurses Week!

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

–Constantine E. Kanakis MD, MSc, MLS(ASCP)^CM is a first-year resident physician in the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Department at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago with interests in hematopathology, transfusion medicine, bioethics, public health, and graphic medicine. He is a certified CAP inspector, holds an ASCP LMU certificate, and xxx. He was named on the 2017 ASCP Forty Under 40 list, The Pathologist magazine’s 2020 Power List and serves on ASCP’s Commission for Continuing Professional Development, Social Media Committee, and Patient Champions Advisory Board. He was featured in several online forums during the peak of the COVID pandemic discussing laboratory-related testing considerations, delivered a TEDx talk called “Unrecognizable Medicine,” and sits on the Auxiliary Board of the American Red Cross in Illinois. Dr. Kanakis is active on social media; follow him at @CEKanakisMD.

Anticipating Sublimating

Many years ago I worked in a lab that often received dry ice in boxes with our blood product deliveries. The habit in the lab was to dump the excess frozen carbon dioxide into one of our stainless steel sinks. The staff would get excited each time there was a delivery because they liked to run tap water onto the ice to make a “waterfall” of smoke flow onto the floor when they were bored. Before too long, this repeated incorrect placement of dry ice resulted in severe damage to the sink and pipes below. The stainless steel basin cracked and the sink fell down onto the broken pipes below. That particular plumbing is not designed to handle such a low temperature, and the repair was not cheap. Luckily, no one was injured. I thought this was a long-dead practice in labs, but even today I get questions about proper dry ice disposal and am asked whether or not the sink is a good spot for that.

Dry ice sublimates at room temperature. That means it transforms from a solid state directly into a gas. Too much of this gas in a small space will reduce the normal oxygen levels in the area, potentially causing dizziness and asphyxiation. Letting dry ice sublimate in the work place can be a dangerous practice. If you have dry ice to dispose of, the best practice is to set it outside (where other could not have access to it) so it can dissipate into the open air.

Dry ice is often used in the transport of specimens, blood products, and certain lab reagents. The Department of Transportation considers it a dangerous good, and it must be used and labeled specifically if it is to be shipped by land or by air. If dry ice is used in shipping, an additional Class 9 miscellaneous hazard label also must go to the right of the Class 6.2 infectious substance label. In addition to the Class 9 label, the outer box must be labeled with the net quantity of dry ice used.

Another common use of dry ice is with the transport of outreach or clinic lab samples in courier vehicles. Certain samples must be kept frozen for testing, and the use of dry ice provides a convenient method for maintaining the necessary temperatures. Dry ice is placed in a cooler in the courier vehicle, and samples are placed until delivery to the reference laboratory. With that, there are specific safety practices that should be adhered to when using dry ice for this purpose. Couriers are often overlooked when considering safety training, but they are an important piece of the lab sample and testing process. Be sure couriers have complete safety training, including training for the proper handling of dry ice.

Couriers should limit the amount of dry ice placed inside the cooler that will rest in the vehicle. No more than three pounds of dry ice should ever be placed in that cooler. The cooler should never be completely sealed (remember the ice sublimates to gas, and the volume of the gas in the cooler will expand). Also, if dry ice is kept inside of a vehicle, the windows should be left opened, even a tiny bit. There have been incidents where too much dry ice in a closed vehicle has caused a driver to become dizzy or even become unconscious. Obviously, this is a potentially dangerous or even deadly situation and should be avoided completely.

In recent years, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) added new regulations for labs that handle dry ice. These safety rules include the use of appropriate (insulated or cryogenic) gloves and a face shield when handling dry ice. Safety Data Sheets should be available and staff who use dry ice must have documented training. CAP also discusses the need for using dry ice only in well-ventilated areas.

In the laboratory or outreach settings, employees are asked to work with many dangerous substances, bloodborne pathogens, chemicals, and sometimes dry ice. Inherently, these departments are not safe, but OSHA requires that employees be able to work safely in those places, and it can be done. Proper training and oversight of safety are the keys to ensuring your employees can collect, transport, and process lab samples in such a way in which all involved in these processes are kept safe.

–Dan Scungio, MT(ASCP), SLS, CQA (ASQ) has over 25 years experience as a certified medical technologist. Today he is the Laboratory Safety Officer for Sentara Healthcare, a system of seven hospitals and over 20 laboratories and draw sites in the Tidewater area of Virginia. He is also known as Dan the Lab Safety Man, a lab safety consultant, educator, and trainer.

Making Lemonade from Lemons: Our Laboratory Lives after COVID-19

Laboratorians struggled through 2020 but successfully navigated a difficult situation while maintaining and improving our high-quality service to our patients. By laboratorian, I mean all of us—medical, public health, research, industry, etc.—because, across all sectors, anyone working in a laboratory (our family) was pushed to the limits to do more with less, work harder with fewer people, provide results with challenging procedure standard, and save lives while risking our own. It is quite easy to go into a clinical laboratory that is providing COVID-19 testing and find heroes that were there before, excelled during this pandemic, and will be there tomorrow. But there were heroes in every laboratory. Our public health laboratorians spent tireless hours trying to provide testing, coordinate testing, disseminate information, and relay the best current epidemiology to leadership to keep the country running. Our research laboratorians developed and delivered data, new information, novel biology, and potential interventions for the novel coronavirus. Our industry laboratorians were crucial components to vaccine development and delivery. And, unlike most of the country, our laboratorians were not able to “work from home” because, well, there are laws against having certain things in your house that might escape and kill your neighbors. It is good to be essential, but it has it pain points. Our laboratorians have felt that pain by still commuting to their benches to get the work done every day. But they did it and did it well! And what is often forgotten is that every single one of these laboratorians already had a “day job” in delivering a full catalog of laboratory-based services to which they added a successful COVID-19 response. If you see a laboratorian after you read this blog, you should want to hug them and say thank you.

Vaccination is spreading and will overtake and conquer this virus in parallel with our continued social distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing. In the background, testing will continue and will drive how our leaders make decisions more than anything else. We can see an end to this bedlam and are now facing, perhaps, one of the most difficult questions we have ever faced as a global laboratory community: “What do we do now?”

Our pathologists, long awaiting the day when digital telepathology was the norm, were thrust headfirst into that practice during the pandemic under emergency conditions. Many of them had already started (sometimes in a big way) but others were pushing glass routinely. Many of us have leapfrogged to a place from which we cannot return. We need to evaluate the virtual practice of the past year to determine the error rates and see if it is comparable (or better) than our routine glass slide practice. Is eBay or LetGo going to be overwhelmed with microscopes while high resolution monitors go into backorder? We must still contend with the requirement of “presence” and the moniker of “CLIA”, which was temporarily separated from a pathologist’s role in care during the pandemic. These new digital practices may address our long-standing workforce shortages. Working from home was not a possibility but a requirement for much of the last year. Care continued and work was done. What evidence would argue that working in an office is “better” than working from home when we consider the practice of pathologists? The financial implications of cost per square foot of overhead when taking up space in an academic medical facility is more than sufficient for a CFO to argue that pathologists working from home is great. But this is assuming that the workstation, the workflow, and the outputs were optimized. Not all pathology laboratories went fully digital and there was a great deal of slide shipping/couriering. On the other side of this pandemic, much like the 6 to 10 different platforms found in a clinical lab to perform a COVID-19 test, we will find that many practices are not sustainable, can be replaced and optimized, and will require more upheaval and pivot from our pathologists. To clarify, before COVID-19, pathologists practiced basically the same anywhere in the world; namely, review of glass slides in slide folders with a connected case file. During COVID-19, a whole new set of options emerged for how we would do that routine work that were uncontrolled and ad hoc. Now on the other side, we must separate the practices that are best for patient care from those that got the work done in a crisis to find our way forward. If the optimal model is (and I am not saying that it is) digital telepathology from anywhere, we must work hard to define “anywhere” for the sake of our patient’s care and safety. Monitor or other devices standards, which have long been the bane of the telepathology community, are still not standards. CLIA is specific about what constitutes a laboratory and its four walls. Accreditation teams do not inspect people’s home offices. On the other side of this pandemic, how do we find a common, best practice in a virtual age? We must return to a state of highest possible quality for our patients without giving up the advances we made in this crisis.

I once wrote up a laboratory revision plan for a firm that had 9 hospitals. Each had its own pathology laboratory employing 1 to 3 pathologist and similar staff for grossing, histology, and admin. Each laboratory had a volume of less than 3000 samples per year (and referred complex cases to a tertiary care center out of network). Based on our revision, in formalin concentration and recycling alone, the system would save $100,000. With a centralized laboratory (easily capable of handling 30,000 samples per year) and a digital pathology strategy, the work could be done by half the number of pathologists. Most importantly, the reagent/supply savings from having one laboratory rather than 9 was astronomical. The bottom line was an increase in revenue of nearly $1,000,000 with a cost savings of more than 75%. The key element of this plan that is important here is the digital telepathology component that reduces the number of staff needed and the office space needed which, at the time of the revision proposal, was “innovative” but thought too new to be reasonable. COVID-19 has tested that one aspect of the model and found it to be more than reasonable. More importantly, laboratory management and organizational leadership has had to take a hard look at costs, cost centers, and fixed expenses in such a way that the model above now becomes not lucrative but essential to staying in operation. We are trained in the laboratory to always be working on quality improvement, but COVID-19 has pushed us to always be working on fiscal improvement as well.

As we return to our “new normal” after COVID-19, the lessons we learned from this pandemic are going to translate into mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, closings, and restructurings of all types of businesses and services with the laboratory being no exception. The concept of surge capacity, for example, for testing of a new infectious agent that has emerged, has been a trial by fire, and there are many important lessons to learn from this as well. Should our approach to the next pandemic be to divert our staff from regular laboratory operations and bring into our facilities 6 to 10 new platforms for testing? Perhaps we should consider using temporary warehouse space offsite from our existing laboratory as well as backfill or relocating staffing for this crisis management to prevent complete disruption of our workflow and our policies. This is the type of solution that can exist when contingency planning is a routine part of operations. Those many facilities that were forced to bring in extra platforms are going to be facing a different crisis as test volumes crash; namely, what to do with the equipment. The firms that produce and sell that equipment have a similar challenge of expanding their platform beyond COVID-19 testing and making it relevant and competitive for the laboratories that have their extra platforms. Although I am not sure eBay or LetGo will be full of microscopes just yet, I am sure you are going to be able to pick up some nifty analyzers for an incredibly low price very soon. Will the memorial to the half-a-million we have lost in this country to COVID-19 be the useless bodies of laboratory devices that we so desperately needed in 2020? I think we owe them a lot more than that. Let us actively rethink our strategies in the laboratory and across our healthcare system so that such memorials are never needed again.

-Dan Milner, MD, MSc, spent 10 years at Harvard where he taught pathology, microbiology, and infectious disease. He began working in Africa in 1997 as a medical student and has built an international reputation as an expert in cerebral malaria. In his current role as Chief Medical officer of ASCP, he leads all PEPFAR activities as well as the Partners for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment in Africa Initiative.

Is the Cures Act a Cure-All?

Hello everyone and welcome back! Thank you to all those that read the previous piece on life and loss, personal growth, and—of course—vaccines. This month, let’s explore something relatively new on the horizon that has the potential to change pathology as we know it: The Cures Act.

Okay, well, new-“ish”; the Cures Act (114^th Congress, H.R. 34) was signed into law on December 13, 2016…so you snooze, you lose I suppose. But don’t worry, this signed law faded into seeming obscurity and is now resurfacing because it’s being implemented and enforced based on some of the language of the bill. Along with supporting measures in research and innovation, the Cures Act has an aim at empowering patients with health record accessibility.

Image 1. Outlined here in a graphic from The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC Health IT), are the three major take-home points of how the Cures Act will affect patient access to health information. (Source: HealthIT.gov)

I will state this plainly. This means that, soon, whether folks like it or not, patients will directly be able to access their medical record en toto without an intermediary office or provider. Pathology reports and other diagnostic materials are not exempt from this. Within the next few months, more hospital systems will implement direct access and release protocols for patients who will now be able to directly read their pathology reports without their primary care physician or specialist’s filter.

Some of you reading are rejoicing and thrilled. Others may be projecting harsh words this way if I’m the first time you’ve seen this. To the former group: If you were a part of the last ASCP Annual Meeting, I was fortunate to be a part of a panel with Dr. Jeffrey Meyers discussing the role “Patient-Facing-Pathology” where he talked about practical applications of involving patients in our work. I discussed concepts like “Pathology Explanation Clinics” and other reimbursable potential encounters we in pathology might soon be involved in. The idea of bringing pathology out of the basement, out from behind the curtain, and in the forefront of the patient healthcare experience has become a large part of our professional discourse for the past few decades—and the Cures Act is an exciting potential catalyst.

Image 2. Excuse the stock-photo watermark, but if you’re expecting encounters like these. Well…you’re half right. (Source Cartoonstock.com)

To the latter group: don’t panic. It’s going to be fine. You’re (probably) not going to get a 03:00 am call from an anxious patient expressing confused consternation over your frozen section report of “low grade oncocytic malignancy” or “defer to permanent…” Well, at least for now. Most programs are implementing a sort of “proofreading delay” before reports are actually released, with enough time to compile addendum reports and amended notes, etc. Even still, the notion that we may be implicated in a tsunami of impending requisite patient demands is indeed daunting.

I’ve spoken to several colleagues inside and outside my department who can’t seem to come to a consensus (very specific joke there) about the nature of how the Cures Act will change our work. Dr. Imran Uraizee, a surgical pathology fellow with me here at Loyola who’s written on here before, shared much of the same sentiment. The double edged sword. The initial hesitation. The problematic “translatability” and readability of our material. The potential benefits… It led to a great discussion, and ultimately, with comparisons to HIPAA rollouts and other large-scale changes in our healthcare delivery, we agreed that there are going to be growing pains. But growing is good right?

And you’re right! Why should we have to add more responsibilities onto our overcrowded plates? We’ve all just accepted the reality of advancing technologies time and time again, adding infinite immunohistochemical capabilities to our testing/send out menus, incorporating as much molecular testing as our department funds can accommodate, and (some of you) painfully tolerating the advent of digital microscopy and—if I may—artificial intelligent software tools. That’s already so much that has changed our landscape. While we figure out ways to get out of the basement so we can finally have windows, why should we change the way we file and release our reports? Or should we? Will we be directly answering the phone calls of exceptionally-involved-in-their-care patients without some kind or reimbursable encounter? Will residents? Think of our administrative support and ancillary staff—we may not have enough phones. When you add more, you expect some burden to shift. This will undoubtedly tax someone’s productivity; we just haven’t figured out who, what, where, or how yet.

But let’s go back to the positives… This is, in fact, a double-edged sword. And while, on the one hand, we might worry over the implications of diving in too deep, this really has potential to advance our profession in such a positive way. First of all, patients’ direct access to pathology reports may do us all a favor an slowly increase the medical literacy challenges we face today. Let’s be honest, pathology reports are not user-friendly and, as much as we may like to admit that our autopsy reports are written so that decedents’ families may find solace or comfort, we’re not writing for them directly. Behind our medico-legalese, our coded clinical content, and high-expert level commentary that far supersedes the standard 7^th grade reading level, are decades of evolution in a field of medicine that has catered to fellow clinicians over patients. We write for heralded concepts in high-reliability and high output departments that demand precision, accuracy, and volume. To some, this may have contributed to some of the medical mistrust we face in this country and with increased transparency and open doors, we may even reduce the litigious nature of the patient-physician dynamic. And hey! If we can actually charge for these encounters like our clinical compatriots—which we have the potential too, by the way—then why not? The average CPT reimbursement in 2018 was $75 for a 15 minute encounter. Let’s say a full day of meeting patients includes four of these consults per hour. That’s about $300 per hour, $2,400 per full work day; with a faculty of about 20-30, just a handful doing consults for a day would be nearly $10,000. I can do more math. So could you. But hey we just bought new state-of-the-art IHC stainers and a boatload of shiny clinical analyzers with matching middleware support. Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth? Wishful budgets aside, I don’t have any definitive answers for you—I know, I usually do, I’m sorry. But if the last two years have taught me anything, it’s that we can’t know what we don’t know unless we figure out what we do know.

We know we’ve been wanting to get out from the “paraffin curtain” for quite some time.

We know we’ve wanted to play a larger part in clinical patient care for decades.

We know we’ve got excellent professionals and experts in every nook and cranny this blog finds readers.

Well… careful what you wish for.

Is the Cures Act a cure all? Probably not. But maybe this is a chance for us to have some positive growth within our profession and an opportunity to connect with patients and simply make healthcare at-large better.

What do you think? Contact me on social media, leave a comment below, or share this piece with your colleagues to spark some conversations in your department.

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

The Laboratory Safety Challenge

In 2014 there was an internet challenge which exploded in popularity. It was the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in which people would dump cold water on their heads and post the video on social media. The person getting the ice water dumped on them would challenge others to post a video of their dousing and they would in turn donate to the cause of finding a cure for ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. The challenge became a world-wide sensation and raised $115 million for ALS research. But, like many good things, the challenge had a dark side. Many people were injured while attempting the challenge, and at least two deaths were at least indirectly associated with it.

Another challenge has come to social media lately, and this one involves a technical skill in the laboratory. It, too, has a dark side. The blood smear challenge is the latest rage for lab techs who enjoy posting videos on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Lab techs show off their skill by making the perfect blood smear. At first it was about who could make a smear with the most perfect beautiful, feathered edge. Then the challenge evolved into people making smears while holding the top slide with one finger or even a pencil. There are those who were quite proud to show off their skill and work.

When watching videos of people in various labs performing this challenge, I cannot help but cringe. Several of these lab techs are not wearing lab coats. Many are not wearing gloves, and I have not seen any perform the challenge while using face protection or goggles. Ignoring the safety regulations about using basic personal protective equipment is apparently the norm. These people post this online without a second thought to a public display of working in the lab without PPE. It speaks volumes about the safety culture in those laboratories, and what it says is not favorable.

The next, less obvious safety issue with the videos is that they are created using cell phones or other personal electronic devices in the laboratory. People are handling devices sometimes with gloves, sometimes without, or they are setting them on lab counters which are likely contaminated. The use of cell phones and other personal electronic devices is a dangerous infection control issue, but it is unfortunately all too common. Even before this latest challenge, lab staff all over the country pose for pictures for social media posts that are taken by cell phones. Despite the fact that known and reported infections have occurred in labs from cell phones (and other items brought home from work), techs continue to use them.

Other issues with the blood smear challenge may be less obvious. Unless these smears are being used, valuable lab supplies are being wasted. Slides and blood-dispenser cap piercing devices cost money, and many lab supplies manufacturers have run into supply shortages this year because of the pandemic. To have a lab waste money or run into shortages for the sake of this challenge might seem foolhardy to some.

Another safety issue with the challenge is the blatant act of playing around with human, potentially infectious blood to make the smears. Staff use engineering controls, work practice controls and PPE to separate people from the hazards in the laboratory. To place oneself at risk unnecessarily, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, borders on reckless.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began affecting labs over a year ago, many laboratorians became concerned for their own personal safety. They were unsure about how they might catch this virus and what effects it might for them and their family. These were valid concerns, and some still have fears today. In conversations with lab staff over the past months I reminded them that they work with bloodborne pathogens every day, and many are as potentially dangerous (or more) than the COVID-19 virus. If Standard Precautions are used on the job, workers will be safe from infections from COVID-19 and other pathogens. The same is true today. Laboratorians may be less worried about the coronavirus, but the risk of infection in labs from this and other pathogens is as real as ever. Using engineering controls, PPE, and safe work practices is the only way to ensure lab staff can go home without bringing something dangerous to our families.

Challenges can be fun. I participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I came out unscathed, but I was likely just lucky, not safe. The same is true for those posting pictures and videos online from inside laboratories. You might have been working that way for years and nothing has happened. Again, that is just luck, and it will run out. Make sure you and your staff are doing what is right, and what is safe. The real challenge is how to get laboratorians in all labs to work safely and follow basic safety regulations. Can your lab meet that challenge?

ASCP Releases Two Evidence-Based Recommendations for COVID-19 Testing

COVID-19 testing can be a bit confusing. Recently, ASCP released two recommendations for COVID-19 testing to help clinicians and laboratories sort through the noise and order the right test at the right time. In addition, ASCP has a plethora of COVID-19 resources, including Town Halls, podcasts, journal articles, and more.