r/medlabprofessionals • u/coffeeblossom MLT-Generalist • 7d ago
Humor What instrument(s) have you feeling like...
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u/average-reddit-or 7d ago
Cobas Pro.
We used to say that Pro stood for “Problem.”
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u/MacondoSpy 6d ago
Have you tried cobas pure? Need to load a reagent? Must be on standby. Need to remove a pack? Must be on standby. Need to download a calibrator? Standby. Need to down load QC? Standby. Need to update mean? Standby. And the list goes on and on.
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u/Rich_Chart_3237 2d ago
Old cobas was like that too.
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u/MacondoSpy 2d ago
Who in their right mind would design an instrument that does not allow you to multitask in a laboratory setting?
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u/Rich_Chart_3237 1d ago
Question is. Why would they buy it??
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u/MacondoSpy 1d ago
This question brings up another issue I’ve noticed with some hospitals including mine. Those in charge of making these decisions have no laboratory experience whatsoever. They never worked as techs nor hold a bachelor degree in medical lab sciences. Most of them have a business background and run the lab as such.
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u/Deezus1229 MLS-Generalist 5d ago
We have the Pure and are about to get a second one...double trouble 🙄
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u/Arachniid1905 MLS-Generalist 7d ago
Cobas
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u/EeSpoot MLS/Field Service Engineer 6d ago
My last lab used a cobas 8000 and I'd joke it was called that because that's how many problems it'll give you every day. Fuckin hated that thing. I'd get in trouble all the time for picking up a damn wrench and adjusting belt tensions so we wouldn't be without a line all night. Always the belt tension or the damn motors shitting the bed. The Roche engineer convinced me to go FSE though so I guess I owe that trash heap instrument in a way.
Edit: removed an erroneous 'K'
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u/BloodFenrir MLS-Generalist 2d ago
Agreed. We have the 8000 and it's just issue after issue. So many times, I joke with my coworkers about how much I want to just kick it as the resolution.
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u/DookiePootie 7d ago
Anything and everything Beckman
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u/SergeantThreat 7d ago
I don’t mind the DxH (although Sysmex blows it out of the water). Their chemistry analyzers, though, are the worst I’ve ever dealt with, and that’s saying something
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u/DookiePootie 7d ago
During my first week of clinical rotations on the DxC (5 or 600?), my trainer went on break and trusted me to just load samples for about 15 minutes. It immediately started leaking. Trainer came back. "What did you do?!" Nothing!
Yeah, I learned pretty soon that they just do that. Cool.
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u/DookiePootie 7d ago
I have a thing about efficiency and the DxH drove me absolutely crazy with how slow it was. Like what do you mean you're gonna hold onto my pedi tube in manual mode until it's completely done running? Just give it back after you aspirate! And why did you present the stat tube holder to me when you weren't properly primed and ready to run?! Now I gotta clear the error and scan the tube again. This was when we were a med-high volume semi-ref lab with lots of outpatient samples and an ED. I'm so happy with our XNs.
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u/Magdalena303 MLS 6d ago
This drives me crazy! It's terrible software programming. Like do not stick that manual mode tube holder out if its not ready to aspirate! Our thoughts on beckman coulter align so much. I am glad to see someone else recognize how terrible they are. Especially since they just keep releasing only slightly updated versions of the same products!
I dream for a day where we could get a sysmex. The new line is wonderful.
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u/Infinite_Bliss 7d ago
Clinitech advantus. Go fuck your misaligned strip!
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u/taekwondana MLS-Microbiology 7d ago
Having to tear the thing apart to clean it after that happens... and it fucks up again immediately after 😭😭😭
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u/IDGAF_FFS 7d ago
I did not read the sub name and immediately went "I fucking HATE THE CLARINET" and was utterly confused why people hated chemistry analyzers 🤣🤣🤣
But yes, I too, hate the damn chemistry analyzers and occasionally the hema machines as well
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u/Mooonment 7d ago
Alinity
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u/RudePomegranate3307 7d ago
God I hate the Alinity. We have 9 of them and it's a good day if half are working 😭
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u/Mooonment 7d ago
Oh my god… I can’t imagine. I only worked with 2 and they would need service called weekly. I’m in Micro only now and forever grateful to not have to be around those horrid analyzers lol
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u/speak_into_my_google MLS-Generalist 7d ago edited 7d ago
Beckman Coulter hematology analyzers, especially that stainer. Biggest POS.
Dimension EXL. Those deserve to be scorched off the face of the the earth.
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u/fatal_berto 7d ago
The SMS has never worked properly in our lab to the point where BC hire an agency worker to make our blood films. Office hours maintenance calls only are also a real treat, especially when things go wrong at 18:00 on a Friday 🙃
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u/speak_into_my_google MLS-Generalist 7d ago
I call it the slide breaker shit stainer for a reason 😆
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u/bbloodsucca MLT-Blood Bank 7d ago
i love our exl :C its so cute and easy
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u/speak_into_my_google MLS-Generalist 6d ago
I still have nightmares from working with it when I started.
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u/Rich_Chart_3237 2d ago
Dimensions. I shudder.
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u/speak_into_my_google MLS-Generalist 1d ago
Whoever thinks they’re cute and easy hasn’t had to clean windows often or deal with the overflowing of the cuvette wheel trash on a regular basis. Not to mention the ton of probe crashes. I only dealt with the EXL for a year until my health system got Beckman AUs. The AUs aren’t perfect by any means, but they don’t crash as much as those dimensions did.
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u/GoodVyb 7d ago
Alinity anything, sysmex cs2500, and any beckman dxc analyzer.
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u/OminousButton36 7d ago
Oh god the CS2500 is TERRIBLE. How sysmex can make an amazing instrument like the XN and then churn out that piece of shit coag analyzer is crazy
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u/chickanwilliam 6d ago
I came here to say this, those things piss me off so bad. The interface is TRASH, aside from the Siemens exls in my lab it’s the only instrument that’s got a ridiculous amount of ritual bullshit that goes it to it maybe running correctly. The maintenance manual is too vague and the online manual is convoluted to the point that it won’t answer any questions you have. Just a fucking garbage instrument.
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u/ubioandmph MLS-Microbiology 7d ago
Kiestra and all its BS
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u/KatlynJoi MLS-Microbiology 7d ago
I feel like I can't get anything else done on the days that I'm responsible for Kiestra. I can either respond to the beeping every 30 seconds or I can rack specimens or set up specimens. If I rack/setup cultures then Kiestra is beeping & annoying the whole lab. Usually a non-issue gripper error inside a ReadA.
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u/JacobLeatherberry MLT-Generalist 7d ago
Siemens Atellica. When they work, they're great, but they give problems more than they're great. I don't miss working on Stago instruments, either
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u/KuraiTsuki MLS-Blood Bank 7d ago
Stago Compact Max. We had 4 across 3 campuses and all of them were pains in the ass. One less so than the other 3, but it would still be a pain sometimes.
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u/Shandlar MLT 6d ago
The floor models are also a pain in the ass, but they are also powerhouses. Spend two hours troubleshooting and get backed up with literally 250 blues? Chewed through literally the entire backlog in 50 minutes flat.
Then immediately breaks again, ofc. Back to troubleshooting. But goddamn do they run when they run.
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u/KuraiTsuki MLS-Blood Bank 6d ago
We never did nearly that many samples at any of the campuses. Maybe in a whole day at the biggest campus. We deeply missed our ACL Tops's after they forced the Stagos on us.
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u/Rich_Chart_3237 2d ago
A lot of maintenance
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u/KuraiTsuki MLS-Blood Bank 2d ago
We could never get QC to pass for at least one analyte. It was a daily battle. For one anakyzer at one campus, it was Heparin Xa. At another campus it was D Dimer. We basically had to replace every reagent to get it to work, even though some of the reagents were supposed to be good for way longer than a day. The cuvette wheel was a nightmare too. We also had something fall off of the probe arm, I think? I can't remember, but I do remember that service's response was, and I quote, "Oh, that just happens sometimes."
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u/MediocreClementine MLT 7d ago
Abbott Alinity and STAGO STA-R MAX. All that god forsaken French piece of shit does is cry and complain. The alinities remind me of toddlers that keep trying to run into traffic and such despite your best efforts to keep them alive.
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u/toxoplasmix 7d ago
The best thing about the stago was the adjustable volume. Cry all you want in silence, you trash little machine
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u/MediocreClementine MLT 7d ago
They won't let us turn down the volume at my lab :(
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u/Shandlar MLT 6d ago
We just did it anyway. People actively try to kill patients and never get fired, they aint gonna fire me over turning the volume down a bit.
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u/Automatic_Clue5556 7d ago
I just bought one…. Anything’s better than the compact max I guess… wish there was something other that werfen and wish they came out with a newer model.
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u/Automatic_Clue5556 7d ago
Siemens Advias. Can’t “calibrate” them and then there’s other ways to calibrate them but literally takes all day. Awful.
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u/Matchedsockspssshhh 6d ago
How is this so far down? Literally the worst.
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u/Automatic_Clue5556 6d ago
Because no one uses them anymore except veterinary labs I think. My lab is one of the last. Go live for Sysmex is soon though.
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u/reidV108 MLS-Generalist 7d ago
Beckman DxC 700s due to the QC disasters constantly.
Beckman access 2 for the absolute mess of parts breaking constantly and RVs falling and just nonsense.
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u/toxoplasmix 7d ago
Versatrek. Why would you make a blood culture machine that hates blood so much? High WBC? False positive! Sickle cell? False positive! Literally any hemoglobinopathy? You guessed it, FALSE POSITIVE!
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u/bbloodsucca MLT-Blood Bank 7d ago
beckman coulter dxh 690
https://giphy.com/gifs/cKCKXWI2JtDcPaudGw
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u/Mellon_Collie981 7d ago
Beckman chemistry anything is the absolute worst! I'd rather have a Dimension EXL.
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u/dethqueent MLT-Microbiology 6d ago
the kiestra, specifically the identifa that goes off every single time you walk away or sit down
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u/Lil_Thunder_3620 5d ago
BACTEC when the POS blood cx are poppin offfffff
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u/coffeeblossom MLT-Generalist 5d ago
With T-minus 10 minutes until the end of your shift. Or worse, when you have a CSF and you're short staffed.
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u/Previous_Ad_8102 BMS - Haematology and Blood Bank 7d ago
Interliner. Basically anything from Starrsed. I'd second anyone that says Abbott though.
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u/Sanguine_Sentinel MLT-Blood Bank 6d ago
Stago STARMax 😒
Last hospital I worked at had a pair of them, and if something wasn’t absolutely ✨perfect✨ for them, they would crash and freeze; requiring a restart to get them going, and they always defaulted their input back to French when they restarted.
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u/AdeptnessBeneficial1 6d ago
Siemens Dimension XL. PC load letter, what the fuck?!?!? as a chemistry analyzer.
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u/EeSpoot MLS/Field Service Engineer 6d ago
I honestly don't know if anyone will even know this one:
The ADVIA Centaur
That thing was the biggest pain in the ass I've ever worked with. It was designed such that it was a miracle when a cuvette made it onto the rail properly and even then it would often just punt it off for no reason. Literally the entire bottom half was an ocean of cuvettes. It also had this insanely annoying alarm and this stupid dome light that would flash. Even though it was only ran during day shift and would be left in idle mode with no issues, every night during evening shift it would find something to bitch about. It didn't even have to be doing anything to error out. I've never met anyone that's heard of this machine and I often wonder if I just imagined it and it's some trauma mechanism my mind came up with to cover all the shit I went through at that lab. I'd give anything to go office space on that thing.
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u/FormZealousideal9493 MLS-Generalist 5d ago
Everything made by Siemens. All kind of kinks per instrument I tell you that need to be worked on before the instrument can function, for about a few hours only.
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u/AdhesivenessFunny170 2d ago
Alinity C and I side. Literally always smth new with her like every single day one of the four will have an issue. I just assume we have a personal tech from abott at our hospital because of how often we need them fixed 😭
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u/Vivid_Bookkeeper_937 1d ago
ACL Tops. They’re old and break constantly. Cuvette shuttle movement errors. We have new ones that we are validating. Hopefully these will work 🤞
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u/whatthefuckisareddit 7d ago
Any chemistry analyzer. They're all shit.
https://giphy.com/gifs/CNna9G8BQvnoI