Hi everyone,
I am interested in becoming an MLT (working on prereqs. now) and possibly an MT someday and would like to hear from anyone: are you happy in your career, what's your typical day like, would you recommend it, etc. etc.

I love my job! I have been an MT for 11 years, and it has been a wonderful career!

My first job was very cushy. I worked at a physician's office. Monday thru Friday, 8-5, no weekends or holidays. Great profit-sharing plan. There were about 100 physicans in the practice with most specialities, so we did see very interesting cases.

My second job was as a generalist in a small rural hospital. I worked graveyard for the first 4 years, then a noon-8:30 shift. The graveyard shift was cool because I was on my own in the lab from 11-6 which really boosted my confidence (and my phlebotomy (blood drawing) skills!) I really felt a part of the team working with the ER doc, ER nurses, floor nurses, radiology tech, respiratory tech, security guard and admitting clerk. There is a big demand for lab techs at the smaller rural hospitals, with as many MLT's as MT's in most of the small labs I've seen. I liked working in all of the areas (Blood Bank, Hematology, Chemistry, and Microbiology) and you get to know the patients in a way that is impossible in the large hospitals.

Typical day on graveyard shift. I arrived at 8:30 (8:30pm - 7:00am four days a week) I helped the noon-8:30 tech finish up if she hadn't already so she could go home. I worked with another tech who worked 3:30 - 11:00pm. We would draw blood from any new patients in the ER, and any "timed draws" on the floor. (Some tests are ordered to be drawn every 8 hours, for example. We had those draws on and off all night. Patients are not crazy about being woken up at 2:30 am to test their blood thinner!) We also drew blood from the moms coming in who were in labor. After drawing the blood, we would come back and spin some of the blood in a centrifuge for chemistry tests then put them on the analyzer, run unspun blood on the hematology analyzer, and sometimes on the patients who needed a transfusion we would crossmatch units of blood in the blood bank. You need excellent multitasking skills in a job like this! I continued to do all of this on my own after 11:00. Around 10:30 or 11:00 (the goal was every 8 hours) I would run quality control specimens on each analyzer to make sure that it got the results it was supposed to. I also did routine maintenance on the instruments as time allowed (shiftly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) All of us were expected to to the shiftly, daily and sometimes weekly maintenance on every instrument. The monthly, quarterly, annual etc. maint. was done by the person especially trained for that instrument. Most of us were assigned to an instrument. Mine was the Chemistry analyzer (along with one other tech). I spent a week in California (expenses paid!) to learn the ins and outs of the instrument. I was also in charge of the blood bank. I trained new techs, wrote procedures, answered questions during the CAP inspections, oversaw the refrigerators, freezer, units of blood, etc. Some nights it was all I could do to keep up with patient work, and other nights the phone never or rarely rang and I could work on blood bank stuff, monthly maint. of the chemistry analyzer, etc. At 5 am I would draw the morning draws for the patients in the ICU (maximum of 6) and come down and run the tests. The results were supposed to be on the charts by 6:30. At 6:00 a phlebotomist would come to work and do the morning draws in the rest of the hospital (Good day - 5, bad day - 25). A tech would also show up at 6 to do her maintenance and quality control before the phlebotomist came back with her draws.

Now I specialize in Microbiology in a large hospital. I work days, usually Monday-Friday, but also every 4th weekend. I have no patient contact, which I miss, but also no stress of results needed NOW! I also teach MT students, which is one of the best parts of my job. There are very few MLT's where I work because the MT school provides enough MT's to fill most job openings.

I wish you lots of luck in your career. [ removed ]
P.S. I love rats too!

Hello yall,

I'm working on my MT also and currently working on the prerequisites. I have heard often that it is a good occupation. And jillgirl, isn't most of your workload automated?

Thanks,
Orb

Some areas of the lab are more automated than others.

Chemistry is very automated. There is a misconception that chemistry techs just put specimens on and report results. They evaluate every result and need to be able to decide if the abnormals are accurate. Physicians want fast, accurate results. They don't want an inaccurate critically low potassium due to the reagent running low, nor do they want an accurate critical result hours later because the tech did a lot of troubleshooting on the instrument before they would believe the result.

Hematology is almost as automated. The main hematology analyzer counts the red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, and most new ones tell what kinds of normal white blood cells are present. If abnormal white blood cells are present, the tech looks at a microscope slide to decide what cells are present, and in what percentages (I think it will be awhile before that will be automated, if ever.) There is another instrument in hematology for coagulation tests. Analyzing urine is usually done by looking at color changes on a dipstick. Larger labs have an instrument to do that and in smaller labs the tech reads the dipstick by hand.

Blood banking is rarely automated. The vast majority of labs use test tubes with drops of cells and serum and reagent and the human eye to determine blood types and the compatibility of units of blood. I think there is one FDA approved instrument that does it, but I think the vast majority of labs do blood banking the way it's been done for years and years.

Microbiology has a couple of instruments. One determines if bacteria is growing in blood drawn from a patient. Another reads changes in color and turbidity to determine the identification and antibiotic susceptibilities of certain kinds of bacteria. The vast majority of the work in microbiology is not automated. It is looking at bacteria on culture plates and determining which are normal and which are causing an infection, and identifying them. Some of the bacterial identification is manual and some is automated.

The workday I described above was a job I used to have. There I worked in all four lab departments, so I thought it was a more representative view of the lab. I also worked with a lot more MLT's, so I thought is was a better picture of a job ILikeRats might get. In that job my work with instrumentation was roughly 50/50. In my current job I only work in microbiology, so I work with very little instrumentation.

Good luck in your studies! Have you ever toured a hospital lab? I would guess that if you called a local lab manager and told them that you were a future MT student and would like a tour, they would be happy to show you around. We probably give at least one tour a month to various groups and individuals. Some may even offer job shadows, depending on the management and staffing.

Hey jillgirl,

No, I haven't toured a lab yet though I will probably call and schedule one here soon if allowed. Ii would be helpful to see a lab and especially all the instrumentation they must work with.

Is it easier to work in just one department instead of all four? And also, what are the job shadows you mentioned?

Take care,
Orb

It is hard to say which is easier. It depends on your skills and interests. Do you prefer to do a wide variety of different things in one day? Would you like to do the more esoteric tests that smaller labs do not have the resources to do? You seem to be particularly interested in instrumentation. If you want to work primarily with instrumentation you may want to specialize in chemistry or maybe hematology. You probably won't know until you get through your training whether there is a department that you really like or really don't like.

A job shadow is where you spend the day (or a morning, afternoon or a couple of hours) with a tech to see exactly what they do. You may see less of the overall lab than a tour, but you will get a good idea of what their day-to-day job is like. (Keep in mind that there is a wide variety of med tech jobs.) We don't advertise that we do job shadows, but if someone asks we will try to find a time when the staffing is good enough to do one. Those who shadow at our hospital have to sign some paperwork asking that they keep patient information confidential.

Honestly, I'm a little fearful of the instrumentation but only because I haven't actually seen them yet. All that equipment must be so high tech. I can just see on my first day in clinicals ruining one of those expensive devices (excuse the pessimism) :) . So I'm going to do what you suggested and visit a lab so I will no longer fear the unknown.

Actually, I think I would like the microbiology department. I took micro this past spring and I loved it. Are some of your tasks similar to some of our experiments... quad streak plating, various staining procedures, and biooxidation tests to determine specific bacteria? Because if they are, I would probably like microbiology best.

When I go for a tour, I'll look into a job shadow also.

Thanks,
Orb

You will have guidance from an instructor on each instrument until you are comfortable with it. Nothing to be afraid of. :)

You describe what much of my job is like. We rotate different benches. Two people each day are on a bench we call setups. They receive the specimens, streak them on the appropriate plates for each specimen types and incubate them in the proper incubators. The next day the techs on the reading benches read the plates. For example today I was on the urine bench, meaning I was looking at the urine culture plates. For example, if a urine grew an organism that was a flat lactose fermenter (flat pink colony on MacConkey's agar), beta hemolytic (lysed the red cells on the sheep blood agar), and indole positive (a biochemical reaction--reagent + bacteria = blue color change if indole present) then I identified it as E. coli. I then sent some of the organism to the person setting up antibiotic susceptibilities which determine which antibiotics are effective to kill that strain of E coli. Tomorrow the susceptibility will be complete, and if it looks reasonable for an E coli, I will report it to the physician. Not all organisms are as straightforward to identify. Many I can't tell what they are by looking at them. I then start with a gram stain and do biochemical tests from there. There are other benches to read cultures from other body sites, and also benches to identify parasites, viruses, acid-fast bacteria (like TB) and fungus.

I have seen many students who think they know what department they will like best, and after rotations discover they like others just as much or more. Of course many also guess correctly which one they will like best. Good luck with your schooling. One of the best parts of my job is watching the students learn and grow so much in one year. Our current class is just a few weeks from graduating. The other day I had one of the students read the wound cultures by herself. At the end of the day I looked at every culture with her before we reported them to the physicians, and she was right on. At the beginning of August we will have new class and will have to remind them that staph is catalase positive and strep is catalase negative. The transformation is amazing to watch.

Thanks for all your info. It really puts me at ease because it seems like I'm always wondering if I'm going into the right kind of career. And of course I always wonder if it will be too hard or stressful. But really, I'm very happy I chose this major.

Right now I'm considering a transfer to another university. The one I'm at now seems to have an unorganized med tech curriculum. I'm trying to meet with an advisor at the other university (LSU) to see if all the classes I've completed would satisfy their clinical admission requirements.

Where did you learn the bulk of your knowledge that you use in the lab... prerequisites or clinicals?

Thanks,
Melissa

The bulk of what I use everyday I learned in clinicals, but I never would have gotten through clinicals without the base of knowledge I learned in my prerequisites.

Are you looking to transfer for just your clinicals, or do you still have some prerequisites to complete? Have you looked into taking your clinicals at a hospital-based program rather than a university-based program? I don't really know the advantages or disadvantages of either -- my experience is only with taking prerequisites at a university and clinical year at a hospital-based MT program. At our hospital about half of the students use credits from their clinical year at the hospital to complete their university degree, and the other half come to us with their BS already complete. Just thought you should know all of your options. I copied the requirements for our hospital program below in case you are interested. I assume most programs would be similar. Good luck with your decisions!

Academic Requirements

You are eligible to apply if you:

Have a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.5 and a minimum science GPA of 2.5 on a 4.0 scale.

Have the following required scientific background:

Chemistry: 16 semester credit hours or 24 quarter credit hours are required. Organic or Biochemistry must be included.

Biology: 16 semester credit hours or 24 quarter credit hours are required. Microbiology (including pathogenic bacteriology) must be included; Immunology as a separate course or as part of another course must be included.

All science courses must qualify toward a major in biology or chemistry at the institution the student is attending. Nursing sciences and survey courses do not fulfill the chemistry or biology requirements.

Mathematics: 3 semester credit hours or 5 quarter credit hours in college level mathematics are required.

Optional Courses: Not strictly required, but recommended, are courses in computer science, management, human relations, parasitology, genetics, physiology, hematology, immunohematology, quantitative analysis, statistics, and instrumentation. Having not taken the optional courses will not exclude a student from consideration.

Coursework allowing the student to meet the biology and chemistry requirements completed seven or more years before application may require updating. This is determined by the Program Director.

A grade of D in any required course is not considered passing.

Mostly I'm considering a transfer just for the clinicals. My current university has changed the med tech curriculum to include forensic science, which includes a whole group of classes that I might not need to get in LSU clinicals. As far as I know, classes such as forensic death investigation, abnormal psychology, and anthropology are not needed for LSU. By the way it looks, if I transfer for clinicals, I would complete my degree one year earlier than I orginally planned. But I must see an advisor first to make sure.

My current university holds their clinicals at a local parish hospital... I believe you would consider it a rural hospital. I would assume that LSU works their clinicals in their hospital. So I guess you would consider those hospital-based programs. LSU also trains doctors and therapists, so med tech is one of the only two undergrad degrees that they offer. Let me be a little specific... it's LSU Health Sciences Center that I am considering not the main campus.

Your clinical requirements are very similar to the ones I've seen. Except LSUHSC, their requirements are very vague... they are not specific as to which of the upper level I need. They require only 72 hours of prereqs and have a four-semester duration of clinicals of 56 hours. My university has only two months of clinicals of 30 hours after over 120 hours of prereqs.

I got a response from LSUHSC... they said they would be glad to go over my transcript and give me a tour. I'm pretty sure I want to transfer because I really have my doubts about the university I'm in now.

Thanks,
Melissa