Video made our lab a star - 1988 MLO article awards contest honorable mention

Medical Laboratory Observer, June, 1989 by Cheryl A. Provine

In just 9 1/2 minutes on TV, this laboratory managed totell the hospital staff and the public a great deal of its story.

Like most hospital laboratories, ours has an image problem. Lab employees are the vampires who wake patients up at 3 a.m. for blood work. We're the klutzes who "lost" a critical urine specimen that must be collected again before the patient can be discharged. We seldom get credit for the minor miracles we perform, like stretching a tiny neonatal specimen for all of the necessary tests or reporting arterial blood gases to surgery in record time.

Recently our 347-bed hospital laboratory found a way to improve its image. We produced a polished videotape featuring procedures, instruments, and employees.

This idea came out of a committee planning the laboratory's display for the hospital's Career Day program. The goal was to inform both the public and hospital staff that the lab is more than just a place to go for a blood test. The committee felt a videotape would present the most information in the least space and time.

The laboratory booth would feature the videotape, a cell morphology slide show with taped narration, and copies of job descriptions in the lab. We also decided to set up a microscope with a hematology slide and three blood agar plates. We imprinted the culture plates with washed and unwashed hands and some kisses.

Career Day was supposed to educate the public about careers in the health field and also entice former health care workers back into the field. Prizes were offered for the most informative and professional booth displays in the exhibition.

I was a member of the planning committee, and my husband was a senior telecommunications student at the local university at the time. Together the two of us wrote, taped, and edited the program . In fact, I wrote most of the script during breaks at my job as a technologist, at no cost to the lab.

Producing a 9 1/2-minute videotape can be expensive. Fortunately, we were able to borrow a video camera and buy tapes at cost from the hospital's education and training department.

We kept the concept for the program as simple as possible-to show how the laboratory touches lives from the cradle to the grave. In fact, we opened with a shot of a mother holding her baby in the outpatient laboratory. We zoomed in on a heelstick (but didn't show any blood). Then we showed a photograph of the baby and its parents and grandparents. As the camera panned over the photo, a narrator explained types of tests for babies, adults, and geriatric patients.

A brief introduction of the laboratory's main sections followed. We worked our way through the blood drawing area to the main general lab and finally into specialized sections such as histology and cytology. In doing so, we discussed every section and job classification in the laboratory. The sometimes overlooked secretaries and phlebotomists really appreciated the attention they received.

The logistics of taping were not tricky. We did not have to move any instruments or small pieces of equipment, because our laboratory is just one large room with two wide main aisles. The cameraman could always find room to stand in one of the aisles, and he could zoom into any area for a closer look.

Some staff members really wanted to be in the program, others decidely did not. We had no trouble finding volunteer actors, because the laboratory has a total of 55 medical technologists and technicians. On a given day, 14 to 15 of these staff members work in the general laboratory sectionschemistry, hematology, serology, and blood banking.

Because we taped our employees on the job, names of patients and their test results had to be concealed. Many requisition slips were moved out of camera range to avoid legal problems.

The videotape was intended to entertain as well as inform. We depended on the visual images to tell as much of the story as possible. The close-up shots of a beautiful baby girl in for newborn screening tests drew oohs and aahs every time.

The image of an older girl having a throat culture taken led to a discussion of the complete blood count's role in distinguishing between bacterial and viral infections. We followed the swab into the microbioigy department section, where we explained how our automated analyzer speeds identification and susceptibility studies.

To illustrate the blood bank's activities, we simulated an emergency surgery that required a transfusion. This gave us the chance to discuss safety of the blood supply and the need for volunteer donors.

A discussion of assays that detect internal injuries introduced the chemistry section to our viewers. We touched on cardiac enzymes and arterial blood gases, then mentioned autopsies. Because we did not want to overwhelm or bore our audience, we used general terminology, only adding an abbreviation or a technical term when necessary.

By chance, as we set up the camera in histology, a breast biopsy arrived from surgery. We were able to show a pathologist evaluating the specimen and the steps involved in tissue processing. From histology, we followed another tissue specimen into cytology, where we emphasized the importance of Pap smears in cancer detection.