It’s been 5 months since I graduated from college, and 5 months working as an MLA/T.
During this time I’ve had two jobs that were completely different from each other. One under the title of clinical assistant/lab technician and the other a medical lab assistant. I have to say, it’s been an interesting journey so far learning more about the profession and the different roles we can play in healthcare.
The job I have now is completely different from my previous one. My first job was incredibly patient focused, while my role now is specimen management and has no patient interaction whatsoever. I guess you can think of my experience so far as the two extremes of the profession.
Here’s I’ll be talking about my experience in my second job!
Working as a Medical Lab Assistant
Working as a medical lab assistant has been quite interesting since I’m working in specimen management; which is where all samples go before being tested. As I mentioned before, this job is completely different than my previous job. There’s no patient interaction whatsoever.
In the specimen management department (in general), we are the pre-analytical part of the lab. We receive patient specimens such as Covid-19 swabs, blood samples, and urine samples. Once we received these samples, we accession them into our system to give them a unique patient identifier. This identifier will follow this sample throughout the lab until the testing process and results are made and given to the ordering doctor.
Some of the general tasks we do in specimen management:
- UNPACKING
- The specimens are not leaking.
- The requisition matches the sample (s) and that the sample(s) matches the tests that are on the requisition.
- DATA ENTRY
- The information on the req. and sample are inputted correctly into the system
- LABELLING
- Ensure that the samples and reqs are properly labelled.
- If any mistakes are made by the data enterer, we make sure to underline or circle the mistake and give the sample(s) and requisitions(s) back to them for them to fix.
I learnt a lot about what goes on in the pre-analytical phase of testing in the lab. This aspect of being an MLA/T is a very interesting and rewarding one, especially if you really enjoy data entry. What I do now in my opinion is quite simple and straightforward, the only hard part is trying to figure out what’s written down on the requisitions (since some people don’t have the best handwriting…).
Overall, I miss that patient interaction, not really the phlebotomy part, but just the patient interaction in general. It’s nice that I’ve been able to experience both aspects of the profession so early in my career.
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