More than 100 team members in Texas Children’s Department of Pathology were recently awarded the G.J. Buffone Pathology Improvement Award for the way they responded to the COVID-19 pandemic over the last year – extending shifts, adjusting schedules and making personal sacrifices to manage significantly increased volumes of testing in the lab.
Since March 2020, Pathology has received and tested more than 183,000 samples for COVID-19 diagnostic testing alone. This includes testing of Texas Children’s patients and team members, as well as patients from other hospitals in the Houston area. It is also in addition to various other tests needed for patient management and treatment of COVID-19, which caused test volumes in some specialties to rise dramatically.
For the diagnostic testing, technicians looked at samples like nasopharyngeal swabs, nasal/nasopharyngeal washes and bronchoalveolar lavages. Labs involved in this work included Specimen Management, which receives all specimens from various collection sites; Medical Microbiology & Virology, which handles rapid COVID-19 testing; and Molecular Microbiology, which handles both routine and rapid COVID-19 testing. Additional testing labs included Chemistry for COVID-19 antibody testing, and the Microbiome Center for COVID-19 sequencing for variant surveillance.
To accommodate the increased laboratory workload, Pathology team members worked tirelessly behind the scenes, stepping up to cover extra weekends and even eschewing family and personal time to remain flexible through inconsistent shifts in schedules. In some services where staffing has had to nearly double to keep up with the pace, leaders have managed their teams while also onboarding new technologists to meet the demand.
With a mission to provide state-of-the-art diagnostic services to Texas Children’s patients and their families, Pathology is committed to providing answers to support accurate diagnoses by obtaining puzzle pieces in the form of patient samples. The team celebrated National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week from April 19-23.
For a look at our Texas Children’s lab technicians – truly among the unsung heroes in health care – at work, check out the video above.