Inside the Lab

Flip a switch and the lights go on. Turn the tap and you can get a cold glass of water. Give a sample of blood or urine and you get information about your health. That’s how lab tests have worked until recently. Except for the relationship you have with the person who takes the sample from you, it is rare that you get a glimpse at the many people involved in generating a laboratory test result. Nor do you get much opportunity to learn what happens after the specimen, or test sample, disappears from view. As labs take on an increasingly prominent role in health care, understanding what happens behind the scenes is almost as important as knowing what your test results mean. The articles listed below have been prepared to give you a better sense of the lab and how it functions.

Blood Banking
Blood banking, the process of collecting, testing, processing, and storing blood for later use, is a cornerstone of emergency and surgical medicine and is dependent on the clinical laboratory for ensuring the safe use of blood and its components. This article provides a glimpse into four key aspects of blood banking: 1) donating blood, 2) protecting the blood supply, 3) ensuring its proper use, and 4) the risks involved for donors as well as recipients.

Lab Accreditation
Doctors rely on the laboratory to help in diagnosing a wide range of conditions, and to help monitor the response to treatment. They trust the results that laboratories produce. But it’s still a reasonable question for patients to ask - "How do I know the laboratory has got my tests right?" This article reviews the many processes working to ensure that laboratories do produce reliable results.

Types of Labs
Today, laboratory testing is performed in many different settings, from the large, highly automated central laboratory that performs thousands of tests a day to your own home, where you might do a pregnancy test or monitor your blood glucose levels. All laboratories are not the same for the simple reason that not all tests are the same. This article explains some of the important differences between the various testing settings.

Follow A Sample
For most patients, the "laboratory test" begins and ends with taking the blood sample, or the swab in the back of the throat, or when we hand in the urine sample. In fact, the "test" hasn't even begun. In this article, you can follow two samples - a blood sample and a throat culture - to get a glimpse of what you don't normally see: what happens to your sample, and how carefully it is tracked, once it leaves your sight.