Going to school to become a medical lab tech can provide you with many advantages in today's increasingly technology-driven world. Here are some great reasons to go into this exciting field and why it's important to attend a quality medical laboratory technician school.
What You'll Study and Learn
Studying to be a medical lab tech will give you the complex knowledge required to work in a laboratory environment while providing much needed answers for individuals who need lab and imaging results quickly. With the training you've received, you'll be able to quickly analyze what comes into the lab (usually blood or other specimen samples) and identify any serious illnesses present in a patient.
A Keen Ability to Make a Decision
Part of your training when you're attending a medical laboratory technician school will be to gain the ability to take everything you've learned in the classroom — and through practical experience — and provide a summary of what the results are. This could be anything from routine blood work to analyzing levels of protein or discrepant components in a patient's body make-up. Your ability to analyze what you've found using advanced computer equipment as well as scanning technology puts you in the important position of interpreting what you find, which may determine how a patient is treated going forward.
The Training You'll Need to Succeed
As a medical lab tech, you'll need to be able to operate highly sophisticated equipment that analyzes blood and other samples that have come into the lab. Once they've been "read" by the machine, it will be your job to print out the results as well as submit any further findings to the doctors who have requested the tests in the first place. Therefore, being accurate and able to operate in a sterile environment is important at all times.
Employment Opportunities
Working as a medical lab technician, you could be employed in a hospital, processing lab results at all hours, a private laboratory or even an urgent care center. In each of these facilities, you might analyze blood work as well as check for any possible chemical or parasite problems. Other job possibilities might include working for a company-sponsored medical lab running pre-employment drug tests — especially since such tests are often routine before hiring a new employee these days.
Ultimately, attending a medical laboratory training school will give you the opportunities to work, not only with private practices, but also hospitals with their own in-house labs. Obviously, the environment you are working in is crucial. Do you want to be in a fast-paced hospital ER environment surrounded by patients who might be critically injured and need lab results right away in order to determine their course of treatment? Or are you more comfortable working in a laboratory environment away from direct patient contact? Regardless of the path you choose, the medical lab technician field will have you analyzing very important results that will ultimately chart a person's care path.
