Medical Technologist
By Ken Mosier
For What2Be
WHO AM I?
Name: Lynn James
Title: Laboratory Manager/Medical Technologist
Affiliation: Wilson Memorial Hospital
Education: Associate degree, Indiana Vocation Technical College, bachelor’s, Capital University
WHAT’S 2 LIKE ABOUT LAB WORK?
• Variety of work — especially for generalists
• Good pay and growing job demand
• Being a big part of diagnosing patients
• Challenging work
WHAT’S NOT 2 LIKE?
• Work can be stressful at times
• Laboratories operate 24/7, weekends and holidays
• Lack of direct patient contact
Quote: “There is a big demand in the laboratory field especially.”
They work behind the scenes in most hospitals and yet their work is vital to the well-being of the patients. Medical laboratory technicians and medical technologists provide physicians and nurses with information to diagnose and treat patients by analyzing patient body fluids.
“Basically we process all blood and body fluid specimens that are sent to us,” said Lynn James, a medical technologist and the laboratory manager at Wilson Memorial Hospital. “It can be a wide variety of specimens. We do sputum and stools and blood and spinal fluid depending on what department you are in.”
She explained that the lab has four major departments: blood bank; hematology; chemical analysis; and microbiology. Those working in hematology do CBCs (complete blood counts), counting the white and red cells and measuring hemoglobin to check for infections or anemia. They also do coagulation tests for people taking blood thinners.
“Chemistry is where we have instrumentation out there to do lipid testing — high cholesterol and glucoses and electrolytes,” she said. “Also the PSAs that people are familiar with for prostate cancer.”
Microbiology takes specimens such as a swab or throat culture to check for diseases such as strep throat.
“We have plated media that has nutrients in it so that the organisms will grow, and we can look at it the next day and say, ‘OK. They do have strep throat,’” she explained. “We can actually mix the bug into some broth and put it in this instrument which will give us a definite identification — such as e. coli — and it will also tell what antibiotics they can use.
“(In the blood bank) we check the antigens and antibodies. If you are going to give a transfusion, you want (the blood) screened to make sure that the blood is not going to cause (the recipient) problems. So we do cross-matches,” she said.
A medical laboratory technician requires an associate degree while the criterion for medical technologist is a bachelor’s degree. Some states require licensure of LMTs and MTs, but Ohio is not one of them. Both degrees prepare the lab professional to work in any area of the lab.
“There are some specialty certification exams they can take,” James said. “So you could have a specialty in blood bank or a specialty in microbiology.”
She said in smaller hospitals MTs and MLTs work in all the different departments of the lab.
“We call them ‘generalists,’” she said.
James said she always wanted to be in a medical field and began her career as a phlebotomist — someone who takes blood samples from the patient — at Wayne Hospital in Greenville.
“I really liked that work and I was intrigued by what the techs were doing back in the lab,” she said. “I thought it was really interesting work.”
She continued working as a phlebotomist while getting her degree and certification as an MLT. She then worked as an MLT while she worked on her bachelor’s and MT certification.
She said that MLTs and MTs can be found in a variety of places from research institutions, clinics that have their own labs, even larger doctors’ offices sometimes hire lab techs.
For those considering the field, she recommends science and math courses and job shadowing to be sure that the MT/MLT career is the right choice.
