Laboratory Scientist Works in the Medical Technology Field

Considered working as a Medical Laboratory Specialist? This interview will take you through the ups and downs you can expect in the position, what it takes to land the job, what you can expect to earn and more. 

If you ask my friends or family what I do for a living, you’ll get a variety of answers. I look in a microscope all day. I play with pee. I draw blood. Even my mother, a nurse of over twenty years, has only the faintest idea of what I do all day. Simply put, I’m the lab. If you go to the doctor, they send your blood and urine specimens to me. If you end up in the ER and need blood, I’m the one who finds blood for you.

I work in the field of medical technology and I’m a medical laboratory scientist. My career path has not been a straight one. I enrolled in college as an engineering major but quickly realized the field wasn’t for me. I changed my major to microbiology and fell in love with the microscopic world. Unfortunately, without a doctorate, jobs were scarce. I looked for an alternative solution and found the field of medical technology. If I went to a yearlong hospital-based medical technology program, I could become a medical laboratory scientist and work in a hospital’s microbiology laboratory.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I’d be learning much more than clinical microbiology. A medical laboratory scientist is expected to be proficient in four areas – hematology, chemistry, microbiology, and blood bank. Medical laboratory scientists are trained as generalists, meaning they are competent to work in all sections, and then can choose to specialize later in their career. But the responsibilities of a medical laboratory scientist don’t end there. My first week of school, I was told we would be learning phlebotomy. My victim, a tall redheaded classmate I had only met the day before, found himself comforting me when I stuck him. The needle barely pierced his arm when I burst into tears.

I have now been a medical laboratory scientist for nearly four years and yes, I no longer cry when I’m drawing blood. I’ve worked in three hospitals with a range of responsibilities from generalist to lead technologist to microbiology specialist. None of my jobs have been the same and every time I change jobs, I have to relearn nearly everything. I’ve found that medical technology school is only a base for your career. In school, you learn the principles behind the tests but each hospital has their own procedures and policies to obtain results from those principles. There are five major instrumentation manufacturers and instruments in the laboratory are replaced every five to fifteen years so as a medical laboratory scientist, I am constantly learning to use new technology.

There’s room for advancement in hospital laboratories. The average medical laboratory scientist is nearing retirement so higher positions are always open to the ambitious. Most bachelor-level medical technology programs have been closed in recent years. Having your bachelors degree in the hospital laboratory automatically sets you apart from the numerous employees with only an associates degree and gives you more opportunity to take leadership positions.

The pay in hospital laboratories is good. In most hospitals, you can expect to make between $18 and $22 an hour. In rural areas, medical laboratory scientists are so scarce that pay can rise up to $26 an hour. If you like to travel, there are travel opportunities for medical laboratory scientists all over the country with higher wages, housing allowance, car allowance, and benefits.

Vacation and benefits vary by hospitals but I have never been employed at a hospital that gave less than 28 days of paid time off a year. Keep in mind though, paid time off includes holidays, sick days, and vacation. Benefits are generally very good so long as you stay in the hospital system. Most hospitals provide tuition reimbursement for continuing your education or to pay back current student loans.

Still, medical technology is not for everyone. Since there are so few medical technology programs, hospitals are often short staffed. New employees are typically hired on second or third shift positions. Even if you luck out like I did on my first job and find a first shift position, you’ll likely be asked to work weekends, holidays, and on-call. If you’ve never had the experience of being woken out of a dead sleep to drive to the hospital and crossmatch blood on a bleeder, I don’t personally recommend it.

Short staffing within the profession also leads to a lot of on-the-job stress. The average new graduate only spends about four years in the field before finding employment in private industry. I spent two years at my first job and by the time I left, there were only three employees of twelve who had been there longer than me. As a medical laboratory scientist, you are often asked to multi-task to the extreme. Running specimens for two or three departments is not uncommon. I have worked entire weekends by myself for sixteen hour shifts.

The truth is medical technology is a hard profession. I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone. The year I spent at medical technology school was the hardest year of my life and looking back, I doubt I would do it again but my training as a medical laboratory scientist has provided me with invaluable life skills and confidence. It has allowed me to travel the world, without a single worry over whether I could find a job when I got back because I know there’s always an opening for a medical laboratory scientist.

This is a true career story as told to JobsInHealthcare.com and is one of many interviews with health care professionals which among others include a Medical Technologist and a Registered Nurse.