For those of us managing laboratories, our priority is to deliver results as soon as we can. Especially during emergency cases, when the treatment plan will depend on the information contained in our lab reports.

Even during the pandemic, delivering results on time has continued to be a top priority for our team. From the moment we step inside our lab, we put all our other tasks on hold and focus on just processing samples and delivering results. Sometimes, this often extended to more than 12 hours, but as always, patients come first.

Back in May 2020, during the peak of the pandemic, when there was a lot of panic amongst the public, our sample load scaled up to 800 samples daily throughout the month! That was quite a critical moment for our lab since we are a small team of only 10.

One big personal lesson that I took away from this entire COVID-19 crisis was the importance of teamwork and collaboration. When we first saw the load that we were dealing with – 800 samples a day in addition to regular patient samples, emergency cases, etc. – we did panic a little. Simply because the load that we were dealing with went way beyond our regular capacity. Thankfully, we were able to pull through.

That is the reality of working in healthcare. We place patient care at the forefront and just do what we need to in order to provide that quality care.

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