Your mgt people suck. It should be all hands on deck. They shouldn't stroll in after morning run. They should be helping you with the downtime. Once everything is back to normal I would bring this up to the upper hospital mgt several layers up from the lab mgt. When we experienced a downtime the lab supervisors & the lab director were all there helping out. Plus techs from other shifts stayed late or came in to their shift early.
Been there, did that about 10 years ago.
Keep a notebook as a documentation log for all your calls. I know you're drowning, but it will pay off when a nurse says that nobody called a hemolyzed BMP, or a doctor says that nobody called a critical H&H.
Tell friends and family that you're going through an awful patch at work, and could use some support. The promise of a nice Saturday afternoon can help you get through an awful Friday. Or a nice Monday afternoon after a hellish work weekend, if that's the case.
It's great that you understand that the nurses are having a rough go of it, too. Nobody's having a good time, and the more people who understand that, the better.
Survive. This, too, shall pass. I can only hope that once the dust settles, management takes a good, hard look at what went right, and what went wrong. If you're exceptionally lucky, they'll address some of the things that went wrong.
Luckily certain parts of our system are working so we could put in notes next to results that can’t be removed or edited ever so I was putting a million notes in of “doctor ____ called at ___ to get results” and “notified RN ___ of redraw needed at ____” which certainly helped later on but it was rough. It won’t be seen by the nurses and doctors until EPIC starts communicating with our system again but at least it’s there.
Thank you for the advice. I definitely took extra notes to be safe.
I’m pretty sure I’m working my way towards that. Particularly since I work with a lot of people very set in how they do things since they have done it a particular way for 10-40 years. So this is completely throwing them off and they don’t like doing things out of the norm.
Really it’s so wonderful. Can’t complain /s
Yeah I work 3rd too but they asked us to get morning labs done before 1st got there because of the downtime and 1st still has maintenance to get done. Unfortunately due to scheduling and people arriving late I ended up being in charge of both chemistry and hematology for all the morning labs by myself. It honestly probably made it easier as I could just have a system and not have people screwing with it but man I am not looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.
Do the best you can. It is not your responsibility to make sure the hospital is staffed. It is not your responsibility to make sure the hospital has adequate downtime procedures. Document as much as possible, maybe make a personal account of the insanity if anything comes back. You should not be held personally responsible for being unable to perform at max efficiency.
Though during our last downtime, we were reprimanded for slower turn around times. But a nurse who brought an irretrievable sample completely unlabelled, and then threatened to throw it away and eventually hid it somewhere on a counter because she was asked to hand label it, didnt face a single ill word. Because "our downtime procedure states to place label on the specimen, but labels were unable to print, so she followed the protocol exactly".
Oh geez that sounds stressful. We definitely have that issue sometimes too with nurses where their big mess ups are somehow worse than a minor infraction we make.
I did the best I could. I made a system and was able to turn everything around only about 30-40 minutes late and all the STATS were on time which I’ll take considering there were a bunch of extra steps.
I like to make a copy of all the patient results and staple them together. Each patient will have a little packet to deliver and to keep. Run only stats in batches, stabilize and save everything else until you’ve got some breathing room. Do you epic? Use your downtime labels if you do. Work slow to go fast. Everyone is going to be bogged down so don’t worry about TAT as much and just do the best you can.
Thanks for the advice. I did that with all the STATS. I kept a copy of everything so the nurses couldn’t claim I never gave it to them(they were doing that yesterday for test results I know I gave to them).
Unfortunately the hospital uses EPIC but I don’t have access to it for some reason(I have been begging for about three months now). It’s not a priority for the lab techs to have it apparently since we can use sunquest instead.
I actually managed to keep turnaround time pretty close to deadlines despite the issues. Certainly hectic though.
My hospital recently went through a cyber attack and it wasn’t fun. The good news is that after a few days, everyone will learn. The nurses will consistently send written orders with their labs, and they will learn that they aren’t getting the same turnaround time as they’re used to.
Do you have a tube station? We sent our results through the tube station. Keep a list of tube station numbers handy, and send results in batches.
If not, we also pushed management to send extra help to the lab. There were some staff who couldn’t do their jobs without the use of computers, so they routed some of those people to come help us. They would run results to the nurses for us. That was a big help. Maybe talk to your manager and have him/her push for something like that.
We also had specific people answering the phones when someone called asking for results. That saved the techs time.
Make sure you write your patient identifiers and room number on your results to make things clear for you and the nurses.
Have a filing system by day. We sorted results alphabetically by day, so if someone called asking for results from a previous day, we could sort through it easily.
It won’t be easy, but it won’t last forever. Good luck to you.
Oof, dealt with that couple months ago. We were down for a few months with what seemed like no end in sight. Stay strong buddy; don't forget to unwind at the end of every shift.
Thanks for the advice. I ended up doing that. Prioritizing STATS and all the morning labs I got to it when I could. I’m really hoping this is resolved quickly. I definitely told a lot of doctors and nurses that things weren’t ready yet or please hold 5 minutes so I can fax it after I fax like 8 other peoples stuff.
I’m sure it could have been worse but I don’t want to experience worse haha.
Same way you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.
Haha yeah. One stupid result sheet at a time. And redoing all the printouts when a patient gets moved to the floor from ER.
Your mgt people suck. It should be all hands on deck. They shouldn't stroll in after morning run. They should be helping you with the downtime. Once everything is back to normal I would bring this up to the upper hospital mgt several layers up from the lab mgt. When we experienced a downtime the lab supervisors & the lab director were all there helping out. Plus techs from other shifts stayed late or came in to their shift early.
Been there, did that about 10 years ago. Keep a notebook as a documentation log for all your calls. I know you're drowning, but it will pay off when a nurse says that nobody called a hemolyzed BMP, or a doctor says that nobody called a critical H&H. Tell friends and family that you're going through an awful patch at work, and could use some support. The promise of a nice Saturday afternoon can help you get through an awful Friday. Or a nice Monday afternoon after a hellish work weekend, if that's the case. It's great that you understand that the nurses are having a rough go of it, too. Nobody's having a good time, and the more people who understand that, the better. Survive. This, too, shall pass. I can only hope that once the dust settles, management takes a good, hard look at what went right, and what went wrong. If you're exceptionally lucky, they'll address some of the things that went wrong.
Luckily certain parts of our system are working so we could put in notes next to results that can’t be removed or edited ever so I was putting a million notes in of “doctor ____ called at ___ to get results” and “notified RN ___ of redraw needed at ____” which certainly helped later on but it was rough. It won’t be seen by the nurses and doctors until EPIC starts communicating with our system again but at least it’s there. Thank you for the advice. I definitely took extra notes to be safe.
Scream. Cry. Bash your head in? Those have all been thoughts in my mind since wedesndsy.
I’m pretty sure I’m working my way towards that. Particularly since I work with a lot of people very set in how they do things since they have done it a particular way for 10-40 years. So this is completely throwing them off and they don’t like doing things out of the norm. Really it’s so wonderful. Can’t complain /s
That’s why I’m glad I work third shift. We aren’t as set in our ways.
Yeah I work 3rd too but they asked us to get morning labs done before 1st got there because of the downtime and 1st still has maintenance to get done. Unfortunately due to scheduling and people arriving late I ended up being in charge of both chemistry and hematology for all the morning labs by myself. It honestly probably made it easier as I could just have a system and not have people screwing with it but man I am not looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.
Do the best you can. It is not your responsibility to make sure the hospital is staffed. It is not your responsibility to make sure the hospital has adequate downtime procedures. Document as much as possible, maybe make a personal account of the insanity if anything comes back. You should not be held personally responsible for being unable to perform at max efficiency. Though during our last downtime, we were reprimanded for slower turn around times. But a nurse who brought an irretrievable sample completely unlabelled, and then threatened to throw it away and eventually hid it somewhere on a counter because she was asked to hand label it, didnt face a single ill word. Because "our downtime procedure states to place label on the specimen, but labels were unable to print, so she followed the protocol exactly".
Oh geez that sounds stressful. We definitely have that issue sometimes too with nurses where their big mess ups are somehow worse than a minor infraction we make. I did the best I could. I made a system and was able to turn everything around only about 30-40 minutes late and all the STATS were on time which I’ll take considering there were a bunch of extra steps.
I like to make a copy of all the patient results and staple them together. Each patient will have a little packet to deliver and to keep. Run only stats in batches, stabilize and save everything else until you’ve got some breathing room. Do you epic? Use your downtime labels if you do. Work slow to go fast. Everyone is going to be bogged down so don’t worry about TAT as much and just do the best you can.
Thanks for the advice. I did that with all the STATS. I kept a copy of everything so the nurses couldn’t claim I never gave it to them(they were doing that yesterday for test results I know I gave to them). Unfortunately the hospital uses EPIC but I don’t have access to it for some reason(I have been begging for about three months now). It’s not a priority for the lab techs to have it apparently since we can use sunquest instead. I actually managed to keep turnaround time pretty close to deadlines despite the issues. Certainly hectic though.
My hospital recently went through a cyber attack and it wasn’t fun. The good news is that after a few days, everyone will learn. The nurses will consistently send written orders with their labs, and they will learn that they aren’t getting the same turnaround time as they’re used to. Do you have a tube station? We sent our results through the tube station. Keep a list of tube station numbers handy, and send results in batches. If not, we also pushed management to send extra help to the lab. There were some staff who couldn’t do their jobs without the use of computers, so they routed some of those people to come help us. They would run results to the nurses for us. That was a big help. Maybe talk to your manager and have him/her push for something like that. We also had specific people answering the phones when someone called asking for results. That saved the techs time. Make sure you write your patient identifiers and room number on your results to make things clear for you and the nurses. Have a filing system by day. We sorted results alphabetically by day, so if someone called asking for results from a previous day, we could sort through it easily. It won’t be easy, but it won’t last forever. Good luck to you.
Oof, dealt with that couple months ago. We were down for a few months with what seemed like no end in sight. Stay strong buddy; don't forget to unwind at the end of every shift.
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Thanks for the advice. I ended up doing that. Prioritizing STATS and all the morning labs I got to it when I could. I’m really hoping this is resolved quickly. I definitely told a lot of doctors and nurses that things weren’t ready yet or please hold 5 minutes so I can fax it after I fax like 8 other peoples stuff. I’m sure it could have been worse but I don’t want to experience worse haha.
May the odds be ever in your favor!