I can imagine when you read that title at first, you’re like what could be dangerous about Routine seeing as it is the characteristic feature of laboratory practice and yes, you’re right. Routine is what keeps a laboratory running. It gives us standard procedures, quality control, consistency and structure. We repeat processes because repetition helps us produce reliable results.

So how can something so necessary become dangerous?

Well sometimes, important work becomes so familiar that we stop seeing it for what it is. I remember how exciting laboratory work felt when everything was still new. The first time I looked through a microscope and actually recognised what I had been studying in a lecture. The first time I watched a reaction produce a colour I had only seen in diagrams. The first time an analyser finally started making sense instead of looking like an intimidating machine with too many buttons.

There was curiosity everywhere and then familiarity settled in. The same bench, analyser, procedures, specimen types, controls and questions.

What once felt fascinating can eventually become: “Just another FBC" or “Just another glucose” and I think this is a side of laboratory medicine we don't talk about enough.

Sometimes, scientists get bored too, not because they don't care about their profession and certainly not because the work has stopped being important. It's simply because humans are remarkably good at adapting to things they do repeatedly.

There is a peculiar challenge in doing meaningful work every day which is the dilemma of how meaningful work can start to feel ordinary.

The scientist who once found excitement in every result may eventually find themselves moving through familiar procedures almost automatically and that is where routine becomes dangerous.

A specimen arrives, gets processed, the test is performed, the result is generated, another specimen arrives and the cycle continues.

Laboratory science was never supposed to be mindless repetition, the same test can produce a different clinical story every time. The same glucose result can be part of a routine check for one patient and a critical piece of information for another.

The numbers may look familiar but science behind them should never become invisible.

This is also why I think the emotional experience of laboratory professionals deserves more attention. We often speak about Medical Laboratory Scientists in terms of accuracy, precision, competence and responsibility and rightly so but behind the coat, gloves and carefully verified results is a person.

Someone who can become tired and  lose their curiosity. Someone who can wonder whether they are still learning. Someone who may genuinely love laboratory science but occasionally struggle to find excitement in doing the same thing for the hundredth time.

That doesn't make them a bad scientist. It makes them human.

Perhaps the answer isn't to escape routine completely. After all, consistency is one of the foundations of good laboratory practice. The challenge is learning how to remain curious within the routine.

To ask why instead of only how.

To investigate the result that doesn't quite make sense.

To understand the clinical significance behind the number on the screen.

To learn a new technique.

To teach someone else what you know.

To explore a different area of the laboratory.

To remember that behind every procedure is a scientific question waiting to be answered.

Finding fulfillment in the laboratory isn't about making every day exciting. It is about refusing to let familiarity convince you that there is nothing left to discover.

There is always another question, another pattern, another unexpected result and that is the mindset that keeps the bench from becoming just a bench.

Routine should describe how often we perform the test, never how much we care about doing it well because the laboratory can be routine but the science should never be🔬