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Welcome back to another podcast episode from Medical Laboratory Science Careers, Guidance and Consulting. My name is Gary Stocker. I wanna continue this series of comparing allied health professions. And today's comparison is of course going to be medical laboratory scientists and a career as a doctor of physical therapy, also known as DPT. And let's just start with the education. And we know medical laboratory scientists have two routes to get into the profession.

The first is an associate degree program in clinical laboratory technology, sometimes called medical laboratory technology. And it's available through a variety of community colleges throughout the country. There's also, of course, the bachelor of science route available to get that MLS, medical laboratory scientist bachelor of science degree. For physical therapy, it's almost exclusively a direct admit program.

to colleges that offer physical therapy programs, and it's a six-year program. You're looking at typically three years of the traditional college education and three years of dedicated instruction and clinical practice in physical therapy. The hours are also a little bit different. You can plan on working in medical laboratories 24 hours a day. That's just the nature of the profession, the nature of the job. Physical therapists, not so much.

Typically, physical therapist hours are much more moderate. There are certainly traditional hospital-based and outpatient-based eight to four, seven to three kind of hours. And there are some evening physical therapy clinics also available. Rarely are there night shift physical therapy positions throughout the country. There may be some in some large acute care medical centers, but beyond that, not nearly as many as you would have with nursing and laboratory.

pharmacy, radiology, and those kind of professions. On the compensation side, we're looking at, as you might imagine, a doctoral program, a six-year program. You're looking at probably starting level somewhere in the vicinity of 60,000, maybe closer to 70,000 per year for doctor of physical therapy. On the associate's degree side in the medical laboratory, you're probably looking at 40,000 to 50,000. On the bachelor side, entry level,

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you're probably looking at something in the vicinity of 50, 55, 60,000. It of course depends on urban versus rural. Rural compensation rates are typically lower than what you would receive in urban areas. Career growth is the next area to compare, probably a lot more associated career opportunities in the medical laboratory, in large part because there's so many analyzers, so many reagents, so many tests that you can just...

you can pursue career paths outside of the laboratory in sales or marketing or technical research or pure research, customer support, instrument support, teaching, and the list goes on and on. There are certainly many career options in physical therapy, probably not as many, again, in large part, because there's limited number of complex instruments associated with the physical therapy career. Patient interaction, you know, on a medical laboratory, typically very little.

if any. In physical therapy, it is constant. That's what you do. You touch human beings. Some like that, some don't. Another way to look at interaction is with physicians. And for the most part, it's a similar kind of interaction for both medical, laboratory scientists and for physical therapists. It's rarely face to face. It's mostly via telephone, maybe via email, maybe via text when physicians are looking for guidance, those kinds of things. Very little face to face.

interaction with physicians. The physical safety, and again, I've talked about this in previous comparisons. The physical safety of the traditional, of the typical medical laboratory professional is really associated with the biohazard risks, and those are so well contained with safety gear, gloves, masks, hoods, those kind of things. At the safety risk, your physical safety risk is modest at worst case. On the physical therapy side, really the physical,

The physical safety is probably not a big deal. It may be a little bit more because it's face-to-face. But the risk of moving your body to move other bodies, patients who tend to be heavier, you run some risks of straining parts of your muscles as you move patients around. Rarely does that happen in medical laboratories. The best part of working in a medical laboratory is you're dealing with lots of different patients. Depending on the

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size of the hospital, the size of the laboratory you're working on. You could impact the health and diagnosis and therapy of hundreds if not thousands of patients during the course of a shift. Physical therapists, again like nurses, you're limited by the number of hours in the day and the typical physical therapy appointment is something in the vicinity of 45 minutes maybe an hour and so you're looking at you know six to eight patients per day. Some people like that, some prefer to have a larger impact on health care.

The worst case is, and I think I've shared this before, in the laboratory, the technology is amazing. The automation, the science, the applied science, the information technology, almost to the point where the work becomes routine, except for those scenarios when things go crazy, when a patient has a strange result, when an analyzer is not giving you the proper results. It can be somewhat routine in the overall scheme of things. The best part on

I'm sorry, the worst part on physical therapy is, again, limited interaction, and you do have some physical risk. And from my understanding, not being a physical therapist, there are some limits to the complexity associated with what you do. It is the same kind of tasks on a regular basis. The best part of both physical therapy is going to be the compensation and the hours. Medical laboratory science is just the ability to do science stuff, applied science stuff.

and taking care of the healthcare needs of others. So I'll invite you back to join us on a future podcast. We'll compare other allied health and professional health positions to help you make a career decision that's best for you and your family. This is Gary Stocker with Medical Laboratory Science, careers, guidance, and counseling.