It's not the competent physicians I worry about... it's the ones like the
Urgent Care Clinic doc that storms into the lab, demands to know who looked
at the wet prep he just got a report on, and then demands to see it on the
'scope himself.  Whereupon he finds a Squamous Epithelial that's a bit
pointy on one end and wants to know why we couldn't identify that
Trichomonas!  This was followed by me trying to explain what Trichomonas was
and why the Squamous wasn't one without fanning the fire, so to speak.

What about the Pediatrician who wants to see a peripheral smear, then looks
at the thick end of the smear and says he sees Monocytes, and follows that
up with a request for a Mono Test?  :) LOL!

Shylirin

Mmmmm... It's rare, but we have had a couple of docs come into the lab
to do exactly that. I do the staining for them, but they do the looking.
We have one Urologist especially that will come in and do that, as well
as one plastic surgeon. A few of the OB-Gyn's will also come in and do
their own wet preps. One ER doc will do that also.

And these are not junior dudes. ;-)

Cheers!

But on ER you see the junior docs doing Gram's stains.

I find that most general docs' knowledge of microbiology is totally
pathetic. That confirms it for me. How absolutely ridiculous!

Hopefully it gave CDC a good laugh after giving them a near heart attack
first....

Judy Dilworth, M.T. (ASCP)
Microbiology

 My uncle had shingles last year and a local (older) Dr. reported
him to the CDC as a possible case of small pox????????????

Hey, John.   Have not been here in a long time.  Mind if I rant on in?  OK,
thanks.  My uncle had shingles last year and a local (older) Dr. reported
him to the CDC as a possible case of small pox????????????

Bye the way I often have cases where I assume a blood culture was ordered
and sure to grow something, only to find none were ordered.  This would be
the one case out of the last twenty (where ewverthing was normal) that blood
cultures were ordered  Go figure.
------------------------------------------------------
My standard reply:  "I am give top priority to your test request and have my
best technician working on it......it is on my microscope now, next in
line....absolutely....bye....
Now where did I put it?

I just have to add a rant over something that happened today. A patient came
in to our ER with a complaint of malaise, weakness, "green sputum", no
fever. He apparently is a recovering alky, no drug use, many many trips to
the ER for vague symptoms. Previous labs were pretty much normal, hiv neg,
lyme neg, rpr non reactive. No hx of travel.

The doc sent up a full battery of stuff (as he usually does) including
cardiac, troponin I, EtOH, dau screen and a request for Q fever and Brucella
antibodies. He claims that he consulted with Infectious Disease. He did have
a WBC of 11.3 with 70% grans. It appears that something is going on!

He never did order a blood culture or a sputum culture! I told the
pathologist that this guy is out of control and he's now not looking for
zebras, but now he's going after Eohippus!  I suggested that we hold this
specimen until we hear directly from an ID doc, but it got sent out to
Quest.

The patient was given a PPD and sent home! I really hope our path goes after
this guy. He's already tracking his ordering of troponins, BNPs and blood
cultures without medical indication of doing so.  I just needed to rant!