Question: Has your work saved any lives?

Natalia Brodaczewska answered on 10 Mar 2020: last edited 10 Mar 2020 5:04 pm

It’s hard to say for sure as I don’t always get to learn what happens to the patients after we give them their test results. But in some ways my work contributes to saving lives – the tests that I do give doctors important information about why the patient is ill and what treatment may be more effective to cure their illness. There is actually one test in our lab that we have to do very quickly (within a few hours) because the patient is at risk of serious complications and there is a chance that they may die if they don’t receive correct medication. Most of other tests that we do are not as urgent but still provide important information that can save people from getting very ill.
Sometimes we also do tests to check how well the patient is responding to medication – if something is wrong, we can quickly let the doctor know so that they can change the way they’re treating the patient and stop their disease from getting worse.