Old timer

[Max001]

Hi all, I'm a retired BB-er who started in the 1970s. When I started these were common practices:

1. We all had coffee and donuts at our workstations and would read a tube and then grab a bite to eat with the same hand, no gloves!
   
2. We didn't wear lab coats
   
3. We only did RPR and Hepatitis testing
   
4. The manager smoked a pipe and people smoked cigarettes to the point where the lab was a little hazy
   
5. No computers - we wrote everything on little index cards
   
6. No typenex or other labeling systems, just handwritten info from phlebotomists
   
7. Doctors would occasionally walk into the blood bank and grab a unit of Oneg off the top shelf and just walk out. (yikes!)
   
8. Techs kept their lunch and drinks on a shelf of the nearest blood bank
   
9. We got to sleep for about 1-2 hrs of the night shift (we had a couch)
   
10. Externs took a rotation on night shift (these were just Med students and we often spent an hour or two the next day correcting their mistakes)
    
11. Docs asked for fresh blood all the time and we'd call in a donor at any time of the day or night and provide a unit of fresh, WB, disease testing often waived!
    

Very few of the techs were Med Techs. (most were Bio majors and some English Majors). Pretty wild days. Surprisingly no one got sick or sero-converted that I'm aware. Today, sad to say, lab work is almost like torture. Long hours, no absences allowed, no pension, FDA and GMP and horrendous labeling, reporting and inspection protocols, and many labs are going to Toshiba rapid turnaround systems. Everyone from the old days is quitting and retiring early. I've been out since 2002 just after the big jump in labeling requirements. I also did hemo-apheresis, collections and therapeutic, another 'fun' gig.

Edited December 2, 2008 by Max001
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[Kellpos]

I also started in the 70's, and still working. My first exposure to blood banking was working for an abortion clinic in NYC, where I did a lot of pregnancy testing, besides

type & screens, setting up RhIG for those who needed it. I also worked in a hospital BB where my supervisor would check panels & tubes with a cigarette in the same hand. We also drew donors and had those big, comfortable chairs that were great for taking breaks - one guy, who worked 2 jobs, would basically spend half of the evening shift asleep on it.

[Max001]

Hi Kellpos, glad to see a fellow OT-er from the 70s era.

Are you with me in being amazed that no one seemed to come down with Hep B or C in those days from the really poor bio-haz control?

We had techs, supervisors who had open styrofoam cups of coffee next to the sero-fuges and knowing what we know now about micro-droplet spray, I'm -sure- they were drinking a mixture of serum and coffee. (yuk)

[Cliff]

Welcome to BBT Max001.

I'm not quite from the 70's, but I remember folks using their Coke can for an ashtray - in the lab of course. As long as we didn't have open cuts on our hands, we never wore gloves - just wipe off that urine with a piece of gauze, it won't hurt you.

[KKidd]

Didn't you forget mouth pipetting of serum and spinal fluid? What fun we had with major and minor crossmatches carried from room temp through Coombs. At first, the gloves drove me crazy. These youngsters have no idea what they missed!?!?!?!?!?

[BSIPHERD]

Welcome Old Timer from a fellow Old Timer. I started in the early 60's and I'm still going. The lab was just changing over from glass bottles to plastic bags. One of my early memories is someone dropping a glass bottle of blood on a tile floor... Also, we had just started doing open heart surgeries. We drew 3 donors the morning of surgery - and one was drawn in heparin. I remember having a bottle of cough syrup sitting by a bottle of iodine (for drawing donors) - and being in a hurry and taking a swig of iodine rather than the cough surgery. I got halled off the the Emergency Room because I started vomitting brown stuff and everyone thought I was vomitting blood!

We also smoked, ate, and played bridge in the blood bank. It's fun to go down memory lane - Thanks!

[donellda]

Welcome to Bloodbanktalk! I started working in the late '70s, not always as a blood banker, but the same things went on in some of the departments I worked in. I remember being grossed out by the techs in hematology running the Coulter and making diffs with coffee sitting on the counter. Yuck!

[Dr. Pepper]

The kids these days don't know what they're missing. I started in the early 70s, and we also ate, drank and smoked in the lab. Do you remember hematologists tapping the ends of Sahli pipettes on their fingers to bring the blood level to the calibrated line, then wiping the blood off their fingertip? Or common mouth pipets - one tech would use it, put it back in the reagent container, then a second would use it....hey, it was a pain washing them! Three of the techs in our lab caught hep B, one died.

[clmergen]

And that is why I am glad I am not that much of an old-timer.

I started when universal precautions were being recommended by OSHA but not yet required, although my hospital did require them.