Congrats!
Happy to hear you are back on your feet and contributing to food safety.
Congrats!
Happy to hear you are back on your feet and contributing to food safety.
Didn't get the job, but hey, it was my first interview in 15 years. I'll try again when they advertise again.Originally Posted by Rare White Ape
Moving right along, this was my bench today. This is a setup for testing five samples. On the left is a tray of food samples in bags, in the middle are test tubes of a solution similar to saline for serial dilutions, and along the bench are various petrifilms and dishes for the development of bacterial or fungal cultures. These are then taken to the incubation rooms to be incubated at specific temperatures for specific periods of time, and after this other staff members will pull them out and count the number of pathogens present.
I'm basically a bacteria farmer at the moment. It takes about 20 minutes for me to setup and test these 5 samples in this fashion, while more experienced workers do it in 2/3 of the time. That was before lunch.
After lunch we had a delivery of about 250-300 swabs from abattoirs around the region (they swab their own benches and equipment for us to test). The size of a test tube rack is 12x6, so it makes sense to test 12 swabs at a time. It takes me half an hour for a batch of 12, while the other guys can do it in half the time. So my whole afternoon was dedicated to just doing swabs.
Neat, never met a farmer before.
RWA and I tend to disagree, so I've gotta disagree a bit here... Bacteria is more like cattle rather than plant, right?
So he's now more like a rancher than farmer. However, rather than a cowboy he's a bacteria boy! Yeehaa!
They advertised again, I applied again and I was interviewed again. Same manager as before… she gave me the job this time!
So I’ve got a three-month contract working part time, at Gold Coast Uni Hospital, same place I was admitted after my accident. At the conclusion of that I’m back out on my arse, but if they require someone for a full time role then I’ll be applying for that and doing the whole interview process again, but at least I’ll have a good head start
Interesting.
Anyway, Congrats!
I started my job on Monday, and since it is now Friday night I'll give you my week 1 post-mortem:
There is a container for specimens that have been sent from the morgue. I'm here all week, try the veal!
The above was a joke. That shall be the last joke I make about the reality of the healthcare system.
...
...
...Maybe.
Those who are friends with me on Facebook might've seen me post about how certain odd body parts get sent through my area for us to process before it gets delivered along to the departments who ultimately do the sciencey thing and analyse samples for patients who require them. There were chunks of what looked like uncooked meat and containers with placentas inside. Since then I've seen other chunks of body parts like tonsils and done a hurr-hurr to myself. These are all things that the average person would expect to see in a lab that processes items that relate to the average medical issue.
I had a reality check today. There are things that the average person SHOULD expect to see, but not a lot of people can talk about it in a mature fashion.
A container marked with 'product of conception'. It was a small jar holding maybe 200 ml of fluid, light red in colour, something inside. I didn't look too closely. I sent it to the appropriate department for analysis, then asked my workmate about it. She confirmed that it is what I think it is. She also said that sometimes you can see the spinal column and early stages of development.
Who knows? It could have been a week, or a month. Only the patient and the physician know for sure. A wee zygote that didn't make it.
Was it alive?
Only the patient and the physician know for sure.
It's not my place to say, or pass judgement, or try and dictate how society should judge such things.
Only the physician and the patient know for sure.
Without compassion, science is a brutal bitch.
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