COVID-19 and the Toll it Took on Laboratory Professionals

This is part of our ongoing From Pathogen to Infectious Disease Diagnosis podcast, where we discuss the relationship between clinicians and laboratory professionals.

As with other medical specialties, the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on laboratory professionals. They also had to work long hours, adapt to new COVID-19 tests, and deal with staffing shortages, which all led to the point of feeling burnt out and some retiring or leaving the field altogether.^1-2

During the initial phase of the pandemic, Jenelle Vargas Musick, DCLS, MPH, MLS(ASCP)CM, was on maternity leave, but when she came back to work as a supervisor of a blood bank, she recalled the sheer amount of tests coming in for COVID, providers calling down for results constantly and this happening behind a backdrop of an already strained laboratory environment and people dealing with their own personal issues at home around COVID. Along with having a newborn baby, Musick also had 4 kids in school virtually during the pandemic.

“You take an already strained workforce—because everybody in laboratory medicine knows that there's a huge shortage of workers—you had a workforce that most were getting ready to retire, and COVID just kind of gave them that boost to be like, ‘I don't want to deal with this.’ You had people like me who had kids who were doing virtual [school]; how do you manage that?”

During the pandemic, Musick points to issues with supplies as well. It was with this last issue that her Doctor of Clinical Laboratory Science (DCLS) became applicable as it helps in thinking strategically about these challenges. For example, there was a shortage of coagulation tubes at Musick’s lab during the pandemic.

“This is one of the things that I love about the DCLS is we're taught how to think critically, to work through those problems, like, how do we solve the problem of a shortage of coagulation tubes? So, prior to getting my DCLS, I probably would have just said, ‘make more tubes.’”

This problem got her thinking about why providers were ordering testing that required coagulation tubes.

“We know that a lot of physicians were ordering excessive amounts of coagulation tests—and for good reason. There's a lot of coagulopathies that occurred with COVID. But for example, when I got COVID, my physician ordered a D dimer, and the D dimer is one of those tests that it's not really sensitive or specific, so is there a way that we could have said, ‘maybe we don't need to do a D dimer on everybody? Maybe we only need to do a D dimer on people who have a history of coagulation diseases.’ Did we really need to do a COVID test on everyone? This is something, as I was thinking through these questions about, How could someone like a DCLS work through these issues? I think at the time, because it was such a novel disease, we didn't know what it was going to do.” However, Musick says if another pandemic happens, DCLS professionals may be more inclined to analyze the data and decide what groups of people need to be tested.

Another significant impact to getting the DCLS is the ability to get involved with the diagnostic management team where both the clinical staff and the lab are working together in concert to give better patient care, she explained. This communication part is a vital piece wehn having a DCLS certification, Musick explained. Her preceptor was always speaking with clinicians and the hospital administration to disseminate information about tests.

“She was always on these meetings and part of the conversation, when these things took place, she was the one representing the lab, and she was able to get out that information,” Musick said.

References

1.Humphries R, Sefers S, Schmitz J, Seegmiller A. Clinical Laboratory Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Clin Infect Dis. 2024;78(5):1093-1096. doi:10.1093/cid/ciad622

2.Buño Soto A. The role of laboratory medicine specialists in the COVID-19 pandemic. Adv Lab Med. 2020;1(2):20200037. Published 2020 May 18. doi:10.1515/almed-2020-0037