Lab Week

[donellda]

Lab week is this week:clap: Is your hospital or organization doing anything special to celebrate? We have something planned for every day. Monday is a big kickoff breakfast. In the past the managers cooked breakfast. This year they are supplying meat and everyone is bringing a little something. Tuesday is "Green Day" and we will have a healthy salad bar. The resident fitness guru (that's me) will do a standing abs workout for everyone:strong:. Wednesday is our lab lunch. The hospital will be supplying a lunch from Subway for everyone. Thursday is "Tiki Bar" day. Two of the supervisors will become bar tenders and serve "non alcoholic" versions of drinks:cool:. We did this last year and it was definitely a big hit. Friday is an international pot luck where everyone brings in a dish based on their ethnic orientation. I am so mixed as far as ethnicity, I will just bring in something "Canadian". We have some really different games planned for this year also. One of the managers will actually be getting a pie in the face:eek:. They have, of course, already agreed to this. It should be a fun week as long as our work load allows it to be fun:confused:. Hope everyone else has a fun week planned!

[lioness@50]

Donellda...By any chance, are you guys hiring? Ha! The commute from Indiana would be a bit much, but having a Lab Week like yours just might be worth it! Bless you for showing your techs the respect they deserve!!

[bmarotto]

We have something planned every day. Coffee break morning, submarine sandwich lunch, seated chair massages, Italian or Chinese buffet lunch, and make your own ice cream sundaes. There are also raffles each day and we are giving tours of the laboratories for the hospital staff. Each laboratory section had to submit three or four questions about what they want those taking the tour to learn about their section. The questions were made into a quiz for our guests to take. At the end of the week, the person with the most correct answers will win a gift card (not sure where but probably a nearby coffee shop or lunch spot). If there is a tie, we will draw names to determine the winner. The tour/quiz is something we are trying for the first time.

Have a great week, everyone!

[jhaig]

We, of course, have the usual litany of food (pizza party and subs from sales reps, lab luncheon by pathologists), but I've been put in charge of games yet again. I work with our church's youth group and we specialize in messy games such as "Spew", where you put an Alka-Seltzer under your tongue, then take a sip of soda. Then you try to hold it in as long as you can - most people only last a few seconds. Just don't swallow...And, of course, all of the action is videotaped for future blackmailings.

I'm adding a Fear Factor - like eating contest between the techs and phlebotomists. No pig's intestine or monkey brains, more stuff like spoonfuls of mayonnaise, dill pickle juice, etc. The crowning event this year is Human Bowling - ten real bowling pins set up at the end of a long hallway, put someone on a skateboard wearing a football helmet, and give them a push. I also want to broaden my employee's minds, so I put together a list of 20 words taken directly from the dictionary that sound offensive or vulgar, but really aren't. You have four definitions of that word and have to guess the right one. The winner gets a week's worth of lunches from the cafeteria (insert hospital food jokes here).

Let's hope our workload allows all of this to actually happen

[rcurrie]

I have something planned for every day also: I will be babysitting the FDA inspector who showed up Tuesday, and plans to stay all through the next week.

BC

[donellda]

I have something planned for every day also: I will be babysitting the FDA inspector who showed up Tuesday, and plans to stay all through the next week.

BC

Sounds like fun:p

[jhaig]

I have something planned for every day also: I will be babysitting the FDA inspector who showed up Tuesday, and plans to stay all through the next week.

BC

If your blood bank administers the tissue bank as well, watch out. My FDA inspector spent nearly twice as much time going through the tissue bank than she did with the rest of the entire department.

[rcurrie]

No problem there- my tissue bank has a separate FDA registration. I am not QA for that department. I am only QA for Donor Services, Production, Testing, and Transfusion.

It looks like I will have my inspection closing tomorrow. The inspector was on site for 11 days (not counting tomorrow). I was there for every minute.

BC

[Eagle Eye]

Wow, I get tired after spending 2-3 days with STATE....I go for a drink after my summation, I am sure you will need one after spending 11 days with FDA. We do not get inspected by FDA.

[rcurrie]

My director said that the hospital regulatory compliance officer wanted to know my action plan for dealing with the FDA inspection. I said it was to go to Corona's Mexican Restaurant for margaritas.

BC

[bmarotto]

Bob, I would suggest an action plan that involves participation by the hospital regulatory compliance officer. Someone has to babysit the inspector while you are at Corona's.

[donellda]

Well with all this inspection talk, I'm guessing that we had more fun at our lab. Here is something that we did to one of our coworkers who attended a yoga class and pulled every muscle in her body. Please view the attachment for some more fun:cool:

TheYogaMasterEffect2.doc

[jhaig]

I've found that playing about 7 straight hours of Madden 07 de-stresses me to no end. I just picture my inspector as a recevier going over the middle and I'm the linebacker.

[John C. Staley]

Looks like you had a lot of fun. I have to say that this was one of the best Lab Weeks we've had. The lab had gone through a great deal of stress and change the past year with all of our out reach going to a new corporate central lab. We lost folks, some transferred to the central lab, others just went else where. Those left felt like they were living in a washing machine on the agitation cycle.

Lab week came about a month after everything had finally fallen into place and it gave everyone a chance to relax a little and even, laugh, which had not been heard for a long time.

The bulk of the credit goes to two very imaginative techs and one incredibly bubbly specimen processor. (I think she shared her medication but I'm not sure on that.) Anyway Lab week was a great success here.

[rcurrie]

Bev, our hospital "regulatory compliance" officer can't even spell FDA. It's one of those made up positions for a nurse manager close to retirement but not quite there yet. I asked her what background she had in regulatory compliance. She said she always did well on JCAHO inspections. She gave me a funny look whenever I told her that JCAHO had no regulations- only standards.

BC

[bmarotto]

Can she spell JCAHO...JAYCOH, right? Or maybe they changed their name to Joint Commission so she wouldn't have to struggle to spell it.

Are you done with your HEFTY HAY inspection yet?

[rcurrie]

She certainly pronounces it that way. Of course, they are now The Joint Commission. I am sure someone got a hefty bonus for coming up with that rebranding idea, just as did the person who recommended the change to AABB (the letters no longer stand for anything).

FDA is gone with the wind, leaving a trail of 483s behind. I consider them job security. In fact, I am going to get an assistant out of the deal. I also asked for a badge and a gun, but there is some doubt about that happening. Employee executions for failure to follow SOP are also apparently out.

BC

[MJDrew]

We had a fun Lab Week at our place as well. Lots of food, of course, as usual. Two big bulletin boards in our public hallway with pix of just about everyone in the lab doing their jobs--as the theme was "the people behind the results", this seemed appropriate. Each section made up a gift basket, for which there was a draw at the end of the week. Some pretty imaginative creations here!

Gee, I wish I could've gotten a bonus for the DUMB idea of making AABB not stand for anything! It has been and always will be American Association of Blood Banks. What am I supposed to tell people when they ask me, "You're going to the AABB meeting, what's that?" "AABB". Etc... Just because they want to start reaching their ever-lengthening tentacles into areas in which they are not, strictly speaking, needed, such as tissues (there IS an AATB, right, and this DOES actually stand for something?)...doesn't mean they have to be known by their initials. I guess it's cheaper not to have to change the main letters of the logo!

MJ Drew

:cool:

[lioness@50]

Geeze...I'm gonna wish I hadn't asked this, but here it goes: To all of you who had wonderful, incredible, fulfilling Lab Weeks, did all 3 shifts share in the fun? Or was like my last employer as well as my current position where 2nd shift gets less of the action. And 3rd shift, well, my only 2 employers totally forgot they even had a 3rd shift when Lab Week came around let alone saving us some ice cream or leaving us a few pieces of pizza. I guess there's no surprise that I belong to one of the "misfit shifts", huh? Lab Week....ugh...bah humbug!!

[rcurrie]

I spent Lab Week (and the week before and after) with the FDA investigator, so I didn't even know what was going on in the rest of the labs. That said, we always take care of 2nd and 3rd shifts. Most of us did their time on 2nd and 3rd shift, so we know what it is like to be the forgotten ones. I had been working 3rd shift for many years when I was promoted to lab director. Once I hit the meeting circuit, I was welcomed to the hospital many times by other department directors who had been working at the hospital many years less than me. I will say that I had more fun working 3rd shift than any other. My fellow workers and I were always cooking up some scheme to mess with the nurses, such as sneaking into unoccupied rooms and pushing the nurse call button, dressing up in "biohazard" suits made from orange biohazard garbage bags and telling a nursing unit that Mr. Smith's infection was due to "that flesh eating bacteria" and has anyone here had direct contact with him, taking turns lying on a gurney out in the hallway covered with a sheet and having a toe tag sticking out and then grabbing anyone who lifted the sheet to see who it was, and other really fun stuff.

BC

[Karen Olsen]

We have incredible lab weeks year after year - it just seems to get better every year. We have many many games. We do a plant/bake sale and gift basket raffles for the entire hospital with the procedes going to toys for Pediatrics or some such worthy cause. We also do a very good job of including all shifts. We have breakfast and lunch provided every day on day shift and then fresh dinner provided for each of second and third shift every day. Yes, they get a lot of leftovers from day shift because we never eat it all. But they also get their very own fresh food! So I guess they potentially gain even more weight than we day shifters!!!! We figure nobody else is ever going to recognize the laboratory so we might as well do a good job of recognizing ourselves.

[MJDrew]

Hey, Lioness! You bet we included all 3 shifts with the catered food and the drawing and the little gift bags we handed out. The pathologists were required to fork over $$!! As Bucs Fan said, they also got leftovers from the day folks, so the more, the merrier. We also had folks on all 3 shifts taking photos for the boards. This was a great idea, as everyone walking by the boards (they're across from an elevator bank in our main clinic tower) or waiting for the elevator had to look at them!

I'm still pressing my department chair to get the big Lab Week banner hung DOWNSTAIRS by the main entrance, like they do for Nurses' Week and every other conceivable week, but no success this year. I'll keep tryin'.

Bob, you are, as my grandma used to say, a real caution! Sounds like a fun shift to work where you were. Before I joined the medical staff, I worked in college as a phlebotomist from 3-11 4 days a week, and we had some fun on that shift. But nothing like you described!

MJ Drew

:cool:

[krhodes]

Theme days...Monday Italian, Tue-American day, Wed-hawaiain, Thurs-Mexican, Fri-Beach day. We are providing the main course and the techs are signing up for the extra's. Games...guess the scrub--pics of techs scrubs...up close...put name to scrub. Guess the item...pics of everyday lab items...up really close. Puzzles...and daily name drawings for prizes.

[tbostock]

Waaaaay too much food; I'm eating carrot cake right now...don't worry, I'm not in the Blood Bank.

[Deny Morlino]

Going to be almost as bad as the holiday season with the amount of food on hand. I will leave the major food cleanup to the younger crew working second and third shift. They can handle the caloric onslought better than I can :cool:.