Mercy lab technician helps patients on microbiological level
Jul. 8—Want to know one thing about Anna Brodrick's job that she absolutely loves?
Windows.
Brodrick, who works inside Mercy Hospital Joplin's lab, said most people conjure up images of a dark place, cold and sterile, surrounded by concrete walls and tons of dirt above their heads. Such images are wrong.
"We're one of the only (hospital) labs that actually have windows," she said, gesturing out a nearby window, the room bathed in morning light. "The (lab) I worked for previously didn't have windows — it was so sad. We had a break room with windows, but that was it." The wall of windows in the Mercy lab, she continued, "is a blessing."
Lab technicians like Brodrick may need such a daily boost. With hundreds of doctors, nurses and technicians toiling away above their heads, and with thousands of patients moving through the hospital on a monthly basis, lab techs are constantly busy in a space that remains open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"There's no 9-to-5 down here," Brodrick said. "We're open all the time — holidays, all that. We're running patients; we're getting accurate results; we are always getting specimens from the ER, all throughout the hospital."
Up to 85% of diagnosis and treatment decisions are based on laboratory results. Those results also make up roughly 70% of the average patient's medical record. Virtually every practicing physician depends on clinical laboratory results for the care of patients.
"We'll run blood samples, we'll run blood screens, we'll run drug screens, we'll (work up) the blood bank, getting all the blood ready for the (morning) surgeries — it's basically nonstop," she said. "We never stop. There's always something happening or something going on."
One special aspect of Brodrick's job is the ability to trace a patient's progress, even though she and the patient will never meet.
"We'll see a patient come into the ER, and if they get admitted, you're able to kind of follow their story throughout the day — what labs they order, what are they doing, how are they doing — and you get to see what happens to them along the way as we take care of them, which is really interesting to me," Brodrick said. "You can see if they're getting better or how they are progressing based on their lab reports. That's really cool."
Even though Brodrick deals constantly with numbers, none of the patients is a number to her.
"We know patients by their names. We're not like some departments that know a patient by their room number. We know names," she said. "It's really helps to have that first-name connection with them without ever seeing them face to face."
A majority of the lab technicians are generalists, which means they can move from one department inside the lab to another without a hiccup. That sort of teamwork came in handy during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brodrick said.
"When COVID first hit ... everything dropped off; it was so slow, and people were scared to get out. Nothing was happening. Then all of a sudden, when the national quarantine was lifted, our numbers started going up way high because people were getting out; they were tired of being (inside their homes)," she said. "That's when it really started getting crazy. We were doing 300 to 400 COVID tests a day, plus giving out blood, blood cases" and other tests.
They succeeded, despite the strain, because "everybody here is just so 'teamwork.' Everybody is so great," she said.
Brodrick, a native of Miami, Oklahoma, said she wanted to work professionally in health care since she was a little girl.
"I remember watching the St. Jude's commercials, and that's really what stirred my heart to do something in the health care field," Brodrick said. "I've always loved kids, and seeing those commercials just drew my heart to it."
She initially had every intention of becoming a registered nurse, but then she took a microbiology class in school "and I fell in love with it," she said.
"I do love (helping) people, but I like being able to help like this," on a microbiological level, she said.
