Lab Values
Hey everyone!
Snow day is over and it’s back to the nurse-y posts. At least for a little while…
Anyways, this has saved my life in clinicals. My coassigned on the oncology floor showed it to me and I haven’t taken a second glance back since.
Apparently, this is the way MDs write lab values, which I had never seen/heard of before. It’s called different things including fish scales and a basic lab values worksheet. There may be other ways to write it, but this is how I learned it. I looked up some samples online and the consensus seems to be the same.
Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else down the road!
This is a chem 7 basic metabolic panel.
So you’ve got:
Sodium, Chloride, BUN
Potasium, Bicarb, Creatine
with Glucose.
And then for your CBC stuff:
White Blood Cells
Hemoglobin
Hematocrit
Platelets
I love it. And, as mentioned in the comments section on a previous post, I like to put the abnormals in red. It makes it real simple. Anything else I need to add (calcium occasionally…) I put on the side, but this usually keeps me covered.
Love,
Laney
Love this! I’m totally going to use it.
Great! Glad you could use it.
=]
This looks cool + simple But
Is this format used for a purpose?
What im asking is, is this a Formula to determine a diagnosis Or used as a mathmatical
equation?
You mention this was revealed while in Oncology.
I am a breast cancer pt. so im extra interested in this.
Thank you for this information.
@Sherry
Oh of course! So basically, a chem 7 panel is a panel of electrolytes that MDs test for. When your blood is drawn, it gets sent to a lab and they check your levels of Sodium (NA), Potassium (K), Chloride (Cl), Bicarb (HCO3), Creatine and BUN for kidney function, and Glucose is blood sugar.
For the bottom panel, it’s the levels for your White Blood Cells (WBCs which can signify infection if abnormal), Hemoglobin (Hgb) and hematocrit (Hct) which check for bleeding, and platelets (plt which can tell you about how well your blood clots).
The way its written is just a handy way to write it out while in clinicals quickly without having to write out a list like:
Na- 34
K- 3.4…. and so on and so forth.
It’s just a time-saving trick.
I happened to learn it when I was in my oncology rotation, but the chem 7 panel is done for patients in most of the floors of the hospital. It’s just to monitor the levels in your body and if there are abnormals, that could help with determining your diagnosis and will also guide your plan of care. Example: Your potassium levels are low…so they may give you an IV fluid with potassium in it to help bring it up.
Stuff like that.
Hope that helps! Feel free to email me (in the contact page at the top) for anything else. Have a great day and good luck to you!!