Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologists

A Day in the Life

Your specialty as a medical technologist determines the course of your day. The field encompasses a range of disciplines and working conditions, so your experiences may differ greatly from those of another specialist. You may spend most of your day using a microscope, an x-ray machine or other medical imagery devices.

As a medical laboratory technologist, you will more likely spend your day with sophisticated equipment than with patients. Before your shift begins, you spend some time reviewing notes and doing maintenance paperwork. In large medical centers, testing labs operate 24 hours a day, so you'll talk with the previous shift's techs. You discover that aside from a minor problem with one of the centrifuges, the prior shift was uneventful. You'll be the one to call the equipment repair technician if it malfunctions again, so you make a note to watch it during your shift.

If you're a cytology lab technologist, you work with cell samples. Your roles include supervising the technicians who prepare slides for microscopy and performing more complex tests yourself. You'll also spend part of your day assessing samples for any irregularities or abnormalities. As a specialist in analyzing Pap smears, for example, you play a vital role in the early detection of cervical cancer. In a center that specializes in infectious diseases, you may be searching slides for evidence of tuberculosis or other contagions. Technicians who have problematic samples bring them to you for a more detailed assessment. Although you have an endless supply of samples to assess, you don't hurry through your inspections; the work you do is too important to rush.

Regardless of your specialty, you follow procedures common to all medical lab technologists. It's your job to maintain proper laboratory protocols to ensure samples are handled and stored correctly. You're also in charge of arranging meetings for lab technicians to instruct them in using new lab equipment. Your adherence to appropriate lab procedures such as frequent hand-washing, regular changing of gloves and careful tracking of samples is also an example for techs. As you become more comfortable in your role, you may make changes to streamline the work process and improve the already high accuracy of your lab.

Because any unusable or contaminated sample could mean a delay in treatment or costly retesting, it's imperative to keep samples pure. It's rare, but if you note any anomaly with a sample such as a name that doesn't match or a tissue type that looks nothing like its label, you'll notify a doctor. Your attention to detail is key to catching these rare errors. During your tenure in the lab, no such mistakes have happened, but you've established a system for the possibility of an identification error.