Misunderstanding- Following procedures

A response to the Misunderstood Activity
created by Danielle Menezes (@dmenezes)

Number of views: 151

Activity 1: Misunderstood
As an educator in healthcare, learners misunderstand the concept of not following proper policies and procedure. In the clinical lab, we follow standard operating procedures or SOPs to complete our work. These documents are meant to standardize your work and if not followed could lead to severe consequences. As med lab technologists (MLTs) we have to be accountable as part of our professional practice. In a clinical setting, the impact can be detrimental to a patient if we decide to not follow proper processes. In healthcare, in order to provide the best quality of care, we need to be able to follow appropriate procedures and policies to ensure we are all performing the same type of work so all our patients are treated the same and have the best outcome.

The analogy, the clinical laboratory is similar to working in a restaurant. The customers are our patients, the kitchen is our lab, and the cook is the MLT. If the cook chose not to follow the recipe, they could potentially produce food of the lowest quality such as poorly cooked chicken. The customers who ordered the chicken could then potentially consume the chicken and get severe food poisoning which is direct patient harm. By following proper processes, the cook needs to follow the recipe for the appropriate cook time thereby providing a well-cooked meal for the consumer. In that manner, if a lab technologist follows the SOP, they would provide accurate patient results to the clinician for treatment.