YAY! I am good at blood tests! They decided to teach the nurse's aides (us) how to do some lab work. And not just ENTER it... but actually to perform some! I learned how to run the IOF (internal organ functions screen) and the differential, which are both blood tests. It is pretty fun. The IOF involves basically you to run the IOF lab computer, and to put some clean new slides into it. It measures things such as albumin, calcium, etc. Then I pour the clear-ish part of the blood into the tube, suck it up with the machine's probe, and let it analyze. The differential is a bit harder, because you must smear a drop of blood into a perfect little fan shape with ruffly edges, onto a slide. They said this is the hardest part of lab, perhaps, and I managed! I started practicing, and then they told me that I could actually smear the blood samples to be run, and not just the practice samples. I was excited, because I did maybe 20 smears near perfectly! It made me happy... I feel important now.
Also, we had a dog with nasty ears. Poor girl... she had a horrible ear infection, and the owners had tried to treat it with over-the-counter, at-the-pet-store ear cleaner. This was a bad thing, I learned, because with an infection, the alcohol in the cleaner just irritated the ears more, causing them to become red and painful. So the dog got some pain medicine, and then we cleaned the ears thoroughly, using the "sucker" (similar to that which pulls a baby's nose mucous out), warm water, medical ear cleaner, swabs, and cotton gauze. She was such a good dog though-- a cocker spaniel, with lovely silky fur on the ears. It was a shame, though, that she had such an unfortunate experience with the painful ears. They got sent home with some antibiotics, and she will be much better soon.
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