Follow the Specimen: Insights into Pathology and Lab Medicine

The video provides a behind-the-scenes look into the work of medical laboratory professionals in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine by following a specimen through the various stages on the journey to the final doctor's report.

An abbreviated journey as you follow a specimen on the journey to the doctor’s report, highlighting behind-the-scenes patient care at Penn Medicine’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. The video provides an overview of the kind of work that happens when your doctor requests a report “from the lab” and shows the magnitude and intricacies of the operations involved in “lab work.”

Among the places that are visited are Phlebotomy, Central Receiving, the Clinical Pathology Core automation lab, the Microbiology lab, the Immunology/HLA lab, Surgical Pathology, Gross Room, and Histology lab. Lab managers and directors narrate the procedures that are shown tin the video in order to educate the public and other health-care professionals. At every stage, the video makes clear that hundreds of laboratory professionals are intimately involved in the care for patients by ensuring the quality and accuracy of their diagnoses, while we get a glimpse of the reliability, professionalism, and diversity of the people working behind the scenes, doing “their best with every test.”

For more information, please visit http://pathology.uphs.upenn.edu.