MCGC Laboratory
My first official day mentoring, which was almost two weeks ago, consisted of me reading a binder that probably weighed as much as I do on safety in the lab. That was pretty boring, but at least it’s done and out of the way. On my second day, I got to sit in on an interview for someone applying to work in the lab. I found it beneficial for me to see what an interview for this kind of job would look like without having the pressure of being interviewed, as all I did was observe. Since then, I have been learning how to prepare and stain a peripheral blood smear for examination and to do a white blood cell (WBC) differential. I prepared the blood smear by creating a wedge smear, in which a drop of blood is placed on the surface of one slide and the edge of another slide is used to smear the blood drop. Next, I stained the blood smears three different ways. The first was a neat stain, or a manual stain, where I dipped the slides in three different solutions and rinsed them off before allowing them to dry. The second was by using a QuickSlide Plus II automated slide stainer, and the third was by using a Sysmex analyzer to stain the slides for me. When I finished preparing the blood smears, I did a manual differential on each of them, which essentially means using a microscope to find and classify one hundred white blood cells from the blood smear. I learned how to identify five types of cells found in a normal WBC differential, including neutrophils (segmented and bands), lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils. I also learned what a normal WBC differential would look like, as well as what would not be normal for a WBC differential. After doing differentials manually, I got to see how a CellaVision analyzer can be used to do a differential by taking pictures of each WBC that it finds and sorting them into categories based on what type of cell it thinks it is. The pictures are displayed on a computer monitor, so unlike a microscope, multiple people can be looking at the same cells at the same time. This was helpful for me as I could try to sort the cells myself and then receive feedback on how to better identify each type of WBC. I’ve only been in the lab for two weeks, but I’m really enjoying what I’m learning, and I’m eager to learn about the other areas of the lab and to have this kind of experience before I even graduate high school.
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AuthorA high school senior exploring the field of medical laboratory science. Archives
April 2019
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