I want to encourage a reporter to follow a Medical Laboratory Professional in a COVID testing lab for an entire shift to understand the immense pressure they are under and the amount of problem solving, reporting and multi-tasking they need to do. #medlab

For example, I can remember my shifts would be 3:00 - brief on crossover with day shift. 3:30 - check analyzer and fill with appropriate amount of reagents/supplies for my shift. 4:00 - Results come off. Verify QC and validity. Report results, check positives. Phone +v to HU.

5:30 - analyzer goes down. Trouble shoot for an hour an get back running. Wait for run to complete 6:30 - New batch of results come off. 7:00 - Restart and Reload analyzer. Repeat run that crashed by pipetting samples over again. 7:30 - Report results from 6:30. 7:34pm - courier.

Notice we're now approaching hour 5 of a shift with no break. This is common.