gary_stocker (00:01.91)
This episode of Medical Laboratory Science Career is gonna focus on the journey from high school and college through getting into that first job as a medical laboratory scientist. Hi, my name is Gary Stocker. It's important to know whatever journeys we take in our lives, whether for careers or vacations or anything, what the process has involved. And I wanna outline today the outline to think about as you consider or pursue a career as a medical laboratory scientist. And the first thing of course is awareness.

And one of the big challenges that medical laboratory science as a career faces is the lack of public awareness. There are precious few people who are even aware of the career or the work done in medical laboratories. So a big part of what we do at Medical Laboratory Science Careers or MLS2030.com is the website, is we focus on awareness. And let's just talk about a couple of things to think about. And this is your...

you're thinking about the career in high school or maybe in college, and really working in a medical laboratory, most are in hospital bases, hospitals, but there are exceptions, and we'll talk about those in a little bit. It's important to know that we're talking about body fluids. It's blood, mostly. It is other body fluids like spinal fluid and urine and microbiology specimens anywhere from sputums to throat swabs to fecal specimens to wounds to tissues.

It involves a lot of work on substances like that. We say that because one of the teasing lines in medical laboratory science is we deal a lot with blood, poop, and pee. It's important to recognize that. It's well managed. The ambiance, as we say, in our household is managed, so the aromas are not disturbing really at all, but it's important to recognize that. I think the second thing to consider is the education path. And of course, this podcast,

is focusing on both high school and college students. But it's important to note that you can have two routes. You can look at an associate's degree program, a two-year program in community colleges throughout the country, not every community college, but many. And there are four-year programs in medical laboratory science through, again, through some four-year public and private colleges, not every one. And if you want to look at the list of public and private two and four-year,

gary_stocker (02:24.502)
Medical Laboratory Career Programs. The site is NACLS, and I'll spell that, it's N-A-A-C-L-S dot org, NACLS dot org, and that stands for the National Association of Accredited Clinical Laboratory Schools. You can go to that site and see which schools are in your region, in your metropolitan area, or whatnot. The courses needed to be considered, as for the most part, standard fair and high school, little heavy on the science maybe.

looking at for some opportunities and maybe the additional math class. And in chemistry, you're looking at not just the basics in biology and chemistry, you're looking at biology one and two, chemistry one and two, you're looking at anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, organic chemistry, which is the foundation of life, what happens with carbon molecules, statistics, and more. That does not include the special disciplines in chemistry and immunology.

blood banking, hematology, microbiology, virology, and others. As part of that college education, there's also a typical internship. And some are paid, most are not, and they're associated with the community college or four-year college you're pursuing. And the internship can be anywhere from six months to something close to 12 months, where you actually work in a laboratory, typically a hospital laboratory, but not always, and learn the specific skills.

how to run automated chemistry analyzers, how to do cross matches, antibody screens, how to do virology testing, microbiology, bacteria identification, and susceptibility testing, and much, much more. After the internship comes that first job. I'll talk about that in a second, but it's also important to note here that the medical laboratory profession has professional credentials, professional organizations that recognize your education, experience, training,

in the medical laboratory. The most common and the only one I'm going to reference today is one from an organization called the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, ASCP. I am a medical laboratory scientist registered by the ASCP. My certification is MT in parentheses ASCP. It's not required, but almost all medical laboratory scientists have it. And then finally, that job itself.

gary_stocker (04:47.51)
and I'll just focus mostly on the first job. A preponderance of all medical laboratory jobs are in hospitals. But it's important to note that the hospitals can be small, medium, large, even really large. In the smaller hospitals, really you'll be trained to do everything across all of the major disciplines in blood banking, microbiology, chemistry, hematology, and more.

In the medial labs, maybe not every discipline, but two or three, or maybe a couple of sub-disciplines like your analysis or virology or things like that. In the large hospitals, usually it's one, maybe two disciplines, major disciplines that you focus on. It could be chemistry, hematology, or specializing for sure in microbiology slash virology, or maybe something like blood bank. And then as your career progresses,

There are many opportunities. I've got documents that show hundreds of different opportunities you can use your medical laboratory science career to leverage for these opportunities. It can be in business, it can be in sales, it can be in research, it can be in education, in quality control, in management. The list goes on and on. So the full career from high school to college through that career start and the actual career itself is typical of most careers.

you start learning a specific skill and you work your way through high school, college, internships and the job itself to be able to move your career forward both for new opportunities and new income associated with those opportunities. We'll continue this discussion in coming podcasts. My name is Gary Stocker and this is Medical Laboratory Science Careers.