This is Trina. She works in the Molecular Laboratory, where she runs COVID-19 testing.
“I think when people say testing, they assume that a machine is doing the testing. They don’t know, but it’s a person doing it.
The Molecular Lab requires a highly skilled professional – it’s not easy to bring somebody in without at least a minimal amount of training.
In recent weeks, we have validated and implemented three brand new COVID testing platforms in order to provide in-house testing. Our lab has brought in new equipment at an unprecedented rate, and we have increased our staffing complement to ensure we can meet the demands of testing during a pandemic. Nearly overnight, the workload in the Molecular Lab increased by over 90 percent!
I personally don’t fear handling COVID samples because that’s what I’m trained for. The Molecular Laboratory is built for this type of testing – COVID testing is very similar to other tests we provide. We are taking every necessary precaution to keep ourselves safe and we already have a very strict cleaning and decontamination procedure in place to mitigate the risk.
COVID has brought the Department of Laboratory Medicine together to work as one unit with the same goal – test our patients in real time while maintaining the highest level of quality standards.”
