Ring…“Hello, this is Zarah in Pathology. May I help you?” After spending a day with Zarah Villareal, pathology assistant with the Southern Hills Hospital Laboratory Department, and hearing her phone ring and that greeting several times within a short period, one quickly learns that a day in her work life is much like being a human pinball with amazing stamina. Bouncing from one blood pull to caring for a patient to her time in the “tissue lab,” there is no shortage of excitement or activity during Villareal’s work day.
“Zee,” as Villareal is affectionately called throughout the hospital, is the pathology assistant/phlebotomist at the facility, meaning that she works in nursing departments including the emergency department, surgical services, women’s services and other units. Villareal performs blood draws, assists in biopsies, creates frozen tissue samples and much more.
“A typical day for me consists of both phlebotomy and pathology. I would mostly be occupied with pathology procedures, paper work, accessioning (processing), frozen sections, reports, send outs and filing,” said Villareal, pathology assistant/phlebotomist at Southern Hills Hospital. “Somewhere between those (tasks), I somehow manage to help out over in the phlebotomy area, whether it is for a T-Spot (tuberculosis blood draw), backing up team members for lunch breaks, processing the (sample) send outs, answering the (unit requests), working on the pending (tasks), and, most of the time, helping out in the emergency department.”
Villareal adds: “I originally started here as a phlebotomist and have been doing pathology for six months now. I decided to do this because, for me, it was a challenge, and I love challenges. It gave me the opportunity to explore and learn beyond what I learned in phlebotomy school. A lot of people would say it is crazy how I try to be in both departments, but I definitely do not mind because it makes my day so much faster and interesting.”
Interesting indeed: In Villareal’s world, her patient interaction goes way beyond skin deep. Literally.
As a pathology assistant, Villareal consistently works with tumor biopsies and will get parts of organs, fingers, toes, extracted pacemakers or medical screws. In a nutshell? Anything that can come from the body, she and the lab team will test for physician analysis, which, in turn, causes relationship-building with the patient through their specimens with sometimes little or no direct human contact.
“I like to think of patients and everything they go through as a ‘360’,” Villareal said. “Patient care is circular, as in 360 degrees; from the moment they come to the hospital to when they leave the hospital, so many of us are touching their lives in more ways that they may not even realize.”
Depending on the day, Villareal can start her morning off with filing blood sample plates and suddenly receive an urgent request to join the radiology team for a biopsy procedure. On this day, that is just what happened.
Ring… “Hello, this is Zarah in Pathology. May I help you? Yes, I will be there in two minutes.” In the middle of working in the laboratory, Villareal is called to assist with a thyroid biopsy. Working with the radiologist and imaging technician, Villareal wheels her pathology supply cart in to the patient’s testing room, where she patiently awaits for the physician to hand her multiple blood samples. Villareal then carefully takes each sample, creates plates with droplets and “smears,” for analysis by the pathologist. It is evident that Villareal treats each sample as her “patient” with expert hands and a precise eye. There is a clear sense from Villareal that she treats specimens as carefully as she would if it were direct human touch.
Following the thyroid biopsy, Villareal is called to the emergency department to perform a blood draw. This, again, is where her “360” comes in — she attends to the patient for the blood draw in the emergency room; the patient is admitted into the hospital for an inpatient stay; Villareal receives the patient’s specimen in the laboratory for analysis preparation; and Villareal then returns to the same patient in their hospital room for another blood draw. Villareal says: “It is important to start the relationship through conversation and care, and also put myself in the patient’s shoes throughout every step of the way. Each time I am with a patient, whether it is direct patient contact or caring for their specimen,
I always try to think about how everything that I am doing is
affecting their life. Not only do I see our patients, I get to literally see different parts of their care and treatment throughout their stay, and those are chances to provide the best possible care at each and every opportunity.”
With her phlebotomy tasks in the ER complete for the moment and not another biopsy in the immediate future, Villareal then turns her attention to the tissue lab. This is where she creates “frozens,” a solid block that envelopes her “patient” (specimen) in a frozen liquid for further testing and analysis. She also performs “staining,” where Villareal places specimens in various liquids to perform testing. Depending on the actual specimen and the physician order, the “patient” may be sent to additional testing laboratories, which Villareal prepares and receives in the tissue lab.
“We test for infection and other potential issues in the tissue lab,” said Villareal. “I have learned so much from working in here, and it gives me the opportunity to work with various departments such as surgical services because they regularly bring in joint replacement hardware that was removed from a patient for testing.
I consider and treat each piece of hardware as my ‘patient.’”
Villareal believes that a positive attitude and caring approach toward each of her patients contribute to a positive patient experience and work day. She says: “I am all over the hospital and bounce from unit to unit, and I have to be “on” all the time. I can’t explain how grateful I am for this job. It teaches me how to manage time, deal with issues and resolve them.”
Villareal treats each patient (both human and specimen) the way she would want her family to be treated. Her careful touch, her watchful eye and sunny demeanor would brighten up anyone’s day and give those patients’ confidence that they are receiving the best possible care.
Villareal’s perspective: “I would say that being able to experience what I do and to have the opportunity to learn while I help at the same time would be the highlight of my job. It gives me a chance to play a big role in the “behind-the-scenes” part when we give our patients the treatment they deserve. There aren’t any low lights [of my job] for me because I feel like it is a win-win situation: I get to experience and learn while the patients get treated and become better.”
Ring… “Hello, this is Zarah in Pathology. May I help you?”
And so goes the 360 degree day of Zarah “Zee” Villareal, pathology assistant at Southern Hills Hospital.