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Regular readers know that sometimes the Westgards engage in Scroogeism. That is, we get all grumpy about the state of something, and spout off in cynical, critical whining. If you don't like to listen to curmudgeons, this might be an essay to skip.

The Lab Week Hangover, 2026

A Bah-Humbug Westgard Essay, April 2026
Sten Westgard, MS

I had the pleasure of traveling and lecturing at a trio of labs across Pennsylvania last week, so I got to see some of the ways that labs celebrate Lab Week (technically, Medical Laboratory Professionals Week). Some labs had so many lunches and festive events that they were spilling over into the following week. Others had had no celebrations at all until the day I visited.

But while I believe strongly in Lab Week, the communal pride and the visibility and the words of praise, after decades of witnessing these weeks, I am beginning to sour on them. I don’t want to take away from the necessity of celebrating the profession and the benefits of showing appreciation to medical laboratory professionals. We deserve this week, and a lot more. But if all it takes to mollify us, to keep us in our place, is a series of (often free) boxed lunches and discount decorations tacked up in the break room, we’re accepting a very low level of effort on the part of our administration, our peers, and our public.

It would be intriguing to see what would happen if we paired up this appreciation with work action, mobilization, slowdowns and even stoppages. My father used to encourage labs to stage a one-day national lab strike, only half in jest, as the clearest way to demonstrate our real value in medicine. Building labor unions, or establishing legal credential requirements (licensure) for laboratory professionals are some of the possible steps we could take.

Instead, we often exalt the virtue in our profession, its nobility, how it is something more like a calling than a profession. The upshot of all these types of praise is that they substitute feelings for finance. Teaching is often called a calling, because teachers are not well paid, expected to work more hours, and endure greater sacrifices and pressures. This psychic wage is meant to replace the actual wage. But when laboratory professionals have to work two jobs in order to afford housing, all the nobility of the profession vanishes. Praise and prestige doesn’t pay the rent.

Doctors and nurses have a noble profession, too, but they get paid. And when nurses aren’t getting paid enough, they engage in slowdowns, sick-outs, and other organized labor tactics to achieve their demands. We should consider this as a model of behavior for our laboratory profession. We don’t start from as strong a position, since we are much less visible to the clinician and patient, but a lack of test results is an extremely powerful bargaining tool.

There is a consensual agreement (perhaps illusion) that 70% or more of medical decisions are made by laboratory tests. The roundness of that number makes it suspicious at best. The better question is to ask, what medical care is delivered without a single laboratory test being run? It does happen, but it might be a number actually lower than 30%.

As labs continue to feel massive financial pressure, letters of recognition from local officials are not enough. Fun runs are not enough. Costumes and photo contests are not enough. We need better pay, better benefits, better working conditions. We need more contact with clinicians and patients. We won’t achieve any increases in salary by meekly hoping we will finally get noticed by executives and administrators. We have to wield the power of our profession and not just demand their attention, but assert our centrality to medical decisions.

Of course, we also find ourselves on the cusp of an AI revolution, one that promises (or threatens) to replace and substitute for medical professionals. If we believe our value will be better recognized by reaching out beyond the laboratory walls to clinicians and patients, and making our presence better known closer to the point of care, AI is promising to provide to provide all of those services at a fraction of the human cost. Whether or not AI is truly capable of serving reliably in that role is not fully known, but the administration and executives won’t make the judgement based on evidence – they will be convinced by the number of staff that can be eliminated/replaced by AI agents and services. And whatever parts of those eliminated jobs actually are unable to be replaced by AI, that work will simply be added to the already heavy burden on the staff survivors. Whatever can’t be automated or AI’d, those tasks will get redistributed to the remaining workers. It’s a trifecta of sorts for the administration: fewer salaries to pay, greater power and pressure to keep remaining salaries low, and enough increased stress and anxiety on the remaining survivors to discourage protest.

I am an incredibly bad vehicle for this message, since I do not work at the bench level, but in an ivory tower. It’s cheap for me to spout off like this. I can extol the benefits of going on strike without ever having to suffer through the consequences. People far better positioned than me, closer to the work, will truly make these decisions. I hope the best I can do here is to provide a different view.

Laboratory professionals are not a toy story. They are vital to the heart of healthcare. One day labs should receive the recognition, and the recompense, that they deserve.