Lab Week Ideas

[tbostock]

It's that time of the year again. Thinking about doing something different for Lab Week this year (usually we just eat all week):tongue:

Since we just moved into our new hospital this year, and nobody in the hospital can find us, I thought I should do a tour, maybe a display in each part of the Lab.

Any other great Lab Week ideas out there that I can steal?

[Likewine99]

We did an open house last year and it sort of "demystified" what goes on "down in the lab". Serve snacks and you will have people beating your door down.

It was a lot of work but very well received.

[Liz]

Lots of successful ideas. Wait until I get to work on Monday and I'll send a few.

[CM2]

We've had a great lab committee, and every year they come up with a few new things. The basic idea is they acquire a few prizes from pathologist and vendor donation. We may even have a small budget for prizes, we had a ton last year. They set up some contests and activities available to every shift, and every thing you participate in earns you a lotto ticket for the prize drawings at the end of the week. Some of the contests are factual quizzes, like, how many manual diffs do we do a year, how many beans are in this jar. Some of them are dressup participation (depends on your corporate culture) - wear jeans, wear all your laboratory related buttons and pins, wear a silly shirt. The more popular quizzes were match this baby picture to grown tech, match this child to tech parent, match this pet to tech owner. One of the most memorable events was the scrubs fashion show where people dressed in their favorite scrubs and got to do their best catwalk while someone announced what they were wearing.

As far as outreach to the rest of the hospital, likewine is right. Serve food and youll have all the interest you could want. (Why are people at work so hungry?) One thing we have done at our hospital is every department prepares a posterboard describing what it is exactly they do, and we get to display them for a day in the hospital atrium (big inside center courtyard area with lots of foot traffic). With candy bowls in front of the posters.

[Byfaith]

Some of our more memorable events were contests similar to those CM2 mentions, particularly to make a "Designer Lab coat" from the disposable coats we use. Also, we had a "Pea in a cup" game -basically a grid of small plastic containers into which you got to toss 3 dried peas. If you got a pea in a certain container you won a prize - everyone got to play once.

Perhaps my favorite was the year we put a huge paper Lab Timeline the entire length of a hallway. The comittee started with some basic lab facts and events, pictures if there were any available - things like the dates certain analyzers were retired, people hired and retired, major lab moves or remodels etc. We have a staff that has been here "forever" so we went back about 30-40 years. Throughout the week people were free to add on any of their favorite memories in whatever part of the timeline they occured. It was really cool by the end of the week!

[AMcCord]

Like the lab timeline idea a lot. We have some disposable lab coats nobody will wear - decorating them might go over well...with a prize for the best one/most relevant to what the wearer does/etc.

[Dr. Pepper]

Free cholesterols, followed by a lab tour (works as well as food). Photo contests (match the tech with parents, pet, baby picture, prom photo, house). Count the jelly beans. Hula hoop contest. Raffle off tote bags, dunkin donut gift cards, coffee cups, pens, flash drives (we save up vendor and other free goodies for a year for this). Silly hat contest. Bad tie or pin contest.

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

My staff have assured me that I would win the bad tie contest every time. They are very cruel (and accurate)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dr. Pepper]

Malcolm, I'm sure they're not bad, they're playful, idiosyncratic, expressive and trend-setting.

[rcollins]

We did an open house a couple years ago and it was a huge hit. We had snacks/baked goodies and a punch bowl all supplied by lab staff in our conference room where people mingled and then lab tour guides picked them up from there and took them around. We made up a word search of every lab employee's name and then used completed word searches as the drawing for a prize. The prize winner got to take home the flower centerpiece we had in the conference room with the food. We also had some pens made up that said "Thanks for visiting the Lab" that attendees took with them.

[DOGLOVER]

We are doing a lunchheon fund raiser for "Dreams Come True" to benefit kids with life threatening illnesses. It is appropriate for us seeing as we have a Children's Hospital. In another lab, (another life) about 15 years ago we did a lab cookbook and donated proceeds to a local charity. It was done in the format of a procedure manual and sold around the hospital. I liked the time line idea.

[sblanchard]

The Blood Bank supplied the drinks one year so we took 2 liter bottles of pop and relabled them as anti-sera. Anti-A- blue mt dew Anti-B reg mt dew or lemonade Anti-D- sprite etc. Also had fruit punch for the A and B cells. Seemed to be well received.

We had a spud contest for the best decorated potato and then had a big baked potato bar with all the fixin for lunch.

This year, we are partnering up with the other two hospital labs in the area and trying to collect 5000 pounds of food for the local foodbank. Should get some publicity for lab professionals.

[klsutherland80]

I worked at a lab several years ago with about 100 employees; we did the lab timeline (around the lab conference room walls where food was served) one year; another year we had an international theme and decorated the lab conference room walls with copies of the flags of the nations or states where everyone was born along with a list of the people born there- that was quite a conversation starter. We have also made a 10 minute video tour which we were able to have played continuously on a portable TV beside the lab week display tables in a main hallway of the hospital. The display table had one display board describing the education required for various laboratory positions along with photos of laboratory employees, and another display board describing the various laboratory departments and the types of testing done in each along with photos of peripheral slides, micro plates, and other things that laboratorians work with. In addition to the display boards the table contained flyers from ASCP for several laboratory positions, and a small individual 35 mm slide viewer with a set of slides borrowed from various old CAP surveys showing things like sickle cells, abnormal WBCs, parasites, etc. This display table was used for several years; no one ever stole the slide viewer or slides, and I could tell the slides were looked at when I did my twice daily table straightening.

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

We had a spud contest for the best decorated potato and then had a big baked potato bar with all the fixin for lunch.

I am officially a geek! I mis-read this as ficin when I first read it!

:lonely::lonely::lonely::lonely::lonely:

[roberman]

Last year I got superhero wall decals on Amazon and superimposed employee faces on them and then stuck them up around the lab. (Some are still on the lockers.) We usually have a factoid game where staff submits an interesting tidbits about themselves and we have to guess who. This year we're matching up dream jobs, posters you had on your wall growing up and comments that were written on your report cards. We might have slide olympics where we vote on the best feathered edge. Guess the crit...spin down various EDTA tubes after running them through the Coulter. Normal word games that can be generated for free on various web sites - jumble, word search, sudoku with words. Also match the date to the discovery/invention.(discovery of A,B,O blood types, Rh, Rhig introduced, etc.) Guess the object: Close up photos of various things around the lab taken at unusual angles. Shuffleboard with petri plates. I took photos of a couple of techs in various "poses" and then had them printed at 8x12 at Costco. Cut them out and you have lab action figures that you can copy and "decorate." Last time we did this, our good humored tech was was turned into a cannibal, ballerina, cowboy and showgirl. We also made "sculptures" from discarded (clean) lab items (gold foil from the tops of gel cards, pipette tip holders, etc.) On a more serious side, marketing is taking group photos and submitting them to the local paper and putting up 11x17 posters in the display cases. The napkin holders in the cafeteria have space for inserts. We were given permission to design an insert - probably the Get Results logo plus "Thank a lab professional for...." or interesting facts. We are also sending out an email to the entire hospital, with a little lab week blurb and then a 5 question trivia challenge, highlighting our work (how many tests are done/yr? What % of medical decisions are based on lab results? (70-80%!!!!)) This year we're also going to dumb down some of the word puzzles and put them in the OP waiting room so that the patients waiting for their lab draws will not notice how long they are waiting! For the staff, I got some Giant Microbes (also on Amazon) as prizes...you win SCABIES!!!!, SYPHILIS!!! MRSA, etc.

[adiescast]

I am officially a geek! I mis-read this as ficin when I first read it!

:lonely::lonely::lonely::lonely::lonely:

OOO, ficin for lunch! Only in the blood bank world...

[tbostock]

Thanks for all of the great suggestions! Here's what we are going to do so far:

1. Lab Open House/Tour with a scavenger hunt. Each dept is going to set up a display for the guests to check out.

2. Food drive

3. Decorate a cookie like a lab specimen: should be fun

4. "Faces of the Lab" poster outside the Lab with pictures of lab staff, their education/credentials, and what they do

5. Phlebotomy appreciation day. Not sure what we are going to do specifically yet

[AMcCord]

We've been doing the decorate your lab coat thing and have discovered some very creative people in the lab. I assembled a bulletin board with some lab facts using shock and awe kinds of numbers, the bigger the numbers the better (how many CBCs in a year and how many were STAT, how many units of blood crossmatched and how many of them were O+ or AB neg, how many bedside glucoses done in a year, etc) - something from every section of the lab. People are amazed about how much we do. I tied the test numbers to photos of staff operating the instruments that perform the tests and attached some small, cheap, safe disposables. Also included are educational requirements for our staff as well as the certifications we hold. Got to brag about ourselves because nobody else is going to do it for us!

[L106]

I really like AMcCord's ideas. I think we should do that on a large poster and put it in the cafeteria during Lab Week next year.

We are simply eating our way through this Lab Week..........(history repeats itself!)

Donna

[AMcCord]

I really like AMcCord's ideas. I think we should do that on a large poster and put it in the cafeteria during Lab Week next year.

We are simply eating our way through this Lab Week..........(history repeats itself!)Donna

Sometimes I think eating is what we do best! We had a continental breakfast today for Lab Week, but we did have fruit with our Danish, so we feel virtuous.

Our bulletin board is in the main elevator hallway on the way to cafeteria, so lots of traffic. I won't claim the lab coat ID as original...I got it from an earlier post or link, but it's been lots of fun.

[YorkshireExile]

We are having a lab week soon and I`ve been asked to come up with a snappy one-line slogan for the event. At the moment all I can think of is the very lame "The lab - the heart of modern healthcare". Surely someone has a better idea than my feeble attempt - please!!

[Liz]

Medical lab professionals- the heros behind the scenes

or

Medical Laboratory: where discoveries begin!

or

Medical lab professionals- Doing our best with every request

or

i could go on...

Oh, I forgot to post activities, its too late now I suppose.

[YorkshireExile]

Many thanks Liz - we all like the one in red!

[Brenda K Hutson]

As usual, I am "a day late and a dollar short" on replying here. So, here are some ideas for Lab Week 2013!

1. If the departments in your Lab are fairly separate (i.e. large Hospital), give a tour of your dept. to staff that do not work there. I did that once for staff in the core lab who had not worked in the Blood Bank for many years; some, not since training. I showed them "how things have changed" through the years (sending blood in pneumatic tube; GEL; electronic crossmatch; et. al.). It was actually very well received.

2. At same Hospital, the entire Lab set up a long table in a main hallway (right by one of the main entrances). Each Lab Dept. put something on display either for fun, and/or to show not only other Hospital employees, but also the public, what the Lab does. Hematology had a microscope set up with some interesting slides. Can't recall the rest. I know I had something "serious" for the Blood Bank, but also had a fun game with a nice prize basket full of goodies, which anyone could play (if non-employees, they wrote their home phone on the answer sheet). I used a blood transfer bag and cut a slit in the front of the bag; mid-section. I then filled it with Red Hot candies; then placed scotch tape over the slit. Then I made a new face label; complete with unit #, blood type, etc. and placed it over that front section. I hung it from an IV pole (as a normal transfusion) with the tubing hanging down. It was a guess how many "red cells" are in the bag. Simple, but fun. One of the things I always enjoy when I do that game (and I have done it at several Hospitals now), is staff trying to figure out how I got the candies in there (because you have covered up the slit). I try to tell them it was very difficult to squeeze 1 red hot at a time through that tubing!

Brenda Hutson, CLS(ASCP)SBB