The reception desk
The laboratory assistants who admit specimens to the laboratory have an exclusive role in ensuring the identity of every case accessioned into the departmental records. Experienced accessioners have a knack for successful troubleshooting. An unrecognized mistake in patient identification could, unless detected further down the line, lead to an unpleasant outcome. The work of the accessioner exemplifies that employees at all levels of the laboratory must be well trained and competent. The value of an alert and perceptive accessioner cannot be underestimated. There is a problem, though, which is that accessioners may come and go, and that new ones must be trained from scratch on the job. Newly hired accessioners, in my experience, may have limited medical backgrounds, with a restricted comprehension of medical language, and with incomplete ideas about human anatomy. They may therefore struggle to distinguish between different specimen types, leading to delays and misunderstandings. Someone who has never worked in a medical setting (biology degree notwithstanding) cannot be assumed to grasp the difference between a piece of skin from a reconstructive procedure and a skin sample associated with a tumor requiring much more special attention. When a patient enters a medical center for an expensive workup, followed by a highly specialized surgical operation with removal of an organ and many other samples, it is only right that this material be received in the pathology department by a person who has a comprehensive understanding of medical nomenclature and terminology.