Have you been hearing about all the jobs in healthcare, but you’re not drawn to nursing? Medical laboratory technicians play an important role in the lives of doctors and patients. Maybe this is a career you haven’t heard much about, and you’re wondering what a day in the life of a medical lab tech looks like. 

Medical lab technicians often work in hospitals, doctors’ clinics, long-term care facilities, specialty clinics (such as urgent care or walk-in care), and primary care clinics. The field provides quite a bit of flexibility in terms of the wide opportunities to choose where you work. 

As an MLT, you have a key role in helping doctors diagnose medical conditions. Lab techs run tests to detect the presence of irregularities, such as cancer, infections, immune dysfunctions, and other abnormalities. 

 When you come to work, the types of daily duties you might perform include things like conducting blood draws from patients, testing for specific markers in the patient samples, preparing the appropriate solutions to test the samples, analyzing samples for disease or other dysfunctions, recording data, and analyzing blood types to determine a match for a transfusion. 

As you move through your day, you’ll also ensure lab specimens are labeled correctly and entered accurately into a patient’s records. You might sterilize and maintain lab and diagnostic equipment, such as microscopes, spectrophotometers and more. You’ll probably communicate directly with other healthcare professionals about a particular patient’s lab results. 

You might also interact directly with patients to draw samples and help them feel at ease if they’re squeamish or fearful about certain procedures, like being poked by a needle. Besides compassion for patients, medical lab technicians need to be accurate and detail-oriented to ensure samples are drawn and tested properly, and reviewed accurately, for a correct diagnosis. MLTs’ expertise is an important part of diagnosing serious medical conditions.     

If working as a detective to track down disease appeals to you, a career as a medical lab tech may be a good choice. Visit www.fortis.edu to learn more about the Medical Laboratory Technology program at Fortis Institutes campuses in Nashville and Cookeville, TN or at the Fortis College campus in Baton Rouge.  Call Fortis today or click here for to request more information.