What made you stay as a medical lab technologist?
Hey all,
Recently (after my graduation last December) it has come to my attention that this profession offers work that is mostly monotonous, repetitive and intellectually unchallenging, especially in my current position in a mostly automated core lab.
Our job description includes phlebotomy in my country, which is fine, as long as most of my work is in the lab. Phlebotomy is also quite unchallenging in the end, and the hard sticks that require some expertise are mainly just annoying rather than interesting.
I would've been fine with phlebotomy as a part of my job when I recently got into my first actual cell analysis tasks, but I quickly noticed that it is mostly the same here - most of the results that need to be validated are simply just printing out reports and forwarding the sample to microscopy (which isn't included in my position...) and managing samples that need special treatment, such as a warm-up or a manual run (which, again, is more of an annoyance more than anything else). While there certainly are interesting patient cases from time to time, they are alm mostly just forwarded to microscopy or path review and we move forward to the next sample.
In the end, working in analysis doesn't even require us to understand anything relating to the methods of analysis or the theory behind it all in general, we just shift tubes into the pre-sorter, press buttons and deal with the different annoyances that come from our automation which mostly include bad labels or the things I already mentioned earlier. It's such a shame really, I was very interested in the theory behind how the machines turn blood volumes into numbers on the screen. It's sad to see that any knowledge about it is not necessary at all in practice. Maybe my point of view is skewed due to not having a lot of experience yet and I haven't seen it all yet, but my days in core lab feel quite boring as of right now.
I hope this doesn't come off as aggressive rant about being a lab tech, but I am actively looking for reasons not to leave the field. I like the relatively good job stability but am finding it difficult to stay in this profession in the long run, I feel like I need a job which requires more creative problem solving that requires me to apply my theory and knowledge. Perhaps I need to switch my position to something else, but I can't help but feeling like the new tasks would, in due time, become just like they feel like to me currently.
...Soo, does it get more interesting as time goes on or should I just start looking for Master's degree programmes in the biofield?
- A frustrated baby tech