Accuracy and precision are very critical within the laboratory. As clinical specimens were received, preserved, processed and examined, clinical laboratory technologists or laboratory scientists, as other people would call it, see to it that not even a single speck of the procedure is taken lightly and left into mere chance and opportunities. Instead, highly organized protocols of assuring the observance of quality control are kept in place as the final diagnosis of diseases lies at such early phase of medical examination.

When clinical works are regarded within the set up of primary standing laboratories, it is expected that duty toils register at considerably manageable magnitude and intervals. Taking this case, however, within the hospital where twenty-four-hour round the clock routines are practiced, the seemingly 24/7 workhorse struggle is just a complete mismatch to mountains of stool specimens and rivers of urine samples received both from OPD (out-patient department) and Admitted Sections (in-patients). Answering the profession’s call, medical technologists gear themselves up with laboratory gowns and goggles and lock their visions down on high-magnifying binoculars and still try to sweat their blood and hearts out to keep up with the fast-pace fury of being a lab rat. Driven by the motivation, however, to issue out reliable results at a respectable non-jeopardizing speed, the use of microscopes was upgraded with newly built equipment that significantly accelerated the tempo of laboratory works. No matter how numerous the specimens would be, laboratorians believe that indeed ain’t no mountain high enough and ain’t no river cold enough as anything of almost everything is taken into higher level.

Before, it would take a lot of time and effort in order to carry out a single bacteriologic examination or immunohematological study. With the advent, however, of analyzers and other automated instrumentation products, the usual marathon-like microscopic study was reduced to dashes and sprints of specimen sipping works, computer encoding tasks, and simple supervisory feats. Manufacturers of these laboratory equipment provide the recipients readily available literature of these machines where working mechanisms, reagent preparation, quality control charts and calibration maneuvers, which are very critical in the laboratory, are simplified to their practical use. In terms of bacteriology, all the technician needs to do is just to flash the bar-coded bottle and corresponding control number registers in a computer. After a certain incubation period, the machine itself will tell if the specimen is contaminated and/or infected with bacteria, hence, the risk of acquiring occupational infections are greatly reduced. When it comes to immunohematology, on the other hand, the use of microscopes and cell counters are no longer needed, as serum, plasma and whole blood samples are just sipped through the machine’s tube and respective colorimetric reactions occur inside. With this working principle, certain blood cells, components and immune-complexes are detected with the arduous effort of adjusting the microscope’s focus and cell counter’s registry tickers. Manufacturers, however, warned that the machine is sometimes susceptible to certain forms of systematic and machine errors, and in this instance, manual confirmatory examinations should be made, each and every time the machine yields abnormal results.