Job prospects for Medical Lab Technicians
Medical lab tech jobs cover a wide variety of specialties and responsibilities. The type of job prospects available depend on whether the person is a lab technologist with a four year degree or a lab technician who works under a lab technologist and has a two year degree, program certificate or apprenticeship training from another lab. Regardless of whether the person is a technician or a technologist all medical lab jobs involve handling of human tissue, cell or fluid samples and their collection, meticulous analysis and preparation of a comprehensive report on the findings. Jobs may range from the area of phlebotomy to managing a research team in case of clinical trials organized by pharmaceutical companies.
Becoming a medical lab technician or technologist is an easy path to a career in the medical field. In considerably shorter time, the candidate can easily secure a job in any reputed hospital, laboratory or university lab. The demand for qualified technicians is on the rise and medical lab tech jobs pay handsomely as well. The responsibilities of lab technicians include performing qualitative and quantitative testing to help in diagnosing the pathological state of the patient as well as formulating a proper treatment plan. Other responsibilities included are recording and tabulating the results of various diagnostic tests and reporting the final findings to the concerned physician. The educational requirements needed to secure a job as a medical technician include attending a two year program to get and associate degree from a college affiliated to National Accrediting Agency of Clinical Laboratory Services.
Many medical lab technicians are generalists, meaning that they can perform all sorts of simple laboratory analysis work, but many lab techs attain specialization through additional education in the form of two year courses offered by many colleges. The various specializations obtained are immunology, histochemistry, microbiology, pathology, virology, bacteriology etc. Obtaining specializations in any of these subjects allow the medical techs to perform analysis on a level deeper than that performed by the generalists.
Medical lab tech jobs involve many duties and they include performing detailed anaylsis of samples of human tissues, cell or fluids and carefully tabulating and quantifying the results obtained from the tests. Lab techs can perform tests ranging from simple blood tests, premarital tests etc to more complex tests like the ELISA test for determination of HIV infection and the detection of various forms of cancer. Human fluid samples are analysed by lab techs using methods like white cell differentials, bone marrow counts , analysis via microscopy. Another major responsibility of medical lab techs is the operation of complex analytical equipment in the lab. The findings of the various tests must be compiled and interpreted correctly by the lab techs, this information must then be quantified and tabulated properly and transferred the the medical experts for proper analysis.
Medical lab techs play a very important role in the healthcare process because they are responsible for quickly and accurately analyzing patient samples which are vital in determining a proper treatment plan or in case of research, to determine the epidemiology of a disease. They also quantify the results obtained during a clinical study or research work. In short medical lab techs are indispensable to the medical field.