What a clinical lab scientist really does
Doctors act on your numbers without seeing you, so you decide which results are real, which are wrong, and which need a phone call right now.
FieldHealth
Preparation (O*NET Job Zone)Considerable preparation needed
What the work involves
What fills a typical week for clinical lab scientists, built from O*NET occupation data.
- Run patient samples on automated chemistry, hematology and coagulation analyzers
- Review results the instruments flag, check them against the patient's history and release, hold or rerun
- Run quality control every shift and stop testing when it fails
- Call critical values to nurses and physicians and document who you told
- Look at blood smears under the microscope when the analyzer cannot classify cells
- Type and crossmatch blood and work up antibodies in the blood bank
- Maintain, calibrate and troubleshoot instruments
What the days are like
What people in the job know
- You are on the phone constantly, mostly calling critical values and answering questions about results. Telephone conversations: 99% every day (O*NET Work Context)
- Machines do most of the testing. Your job is judging when the machine is wrong. Degree of automation: 47% highly automated; Task rank 2: Analyze laboratory findings to check the accuracy of the results, importance 96 (O*NET)
- Accuracy is everything and errors can seriously harm patients. Importance of being exact or accurate: 95% extremely important; Consequence of error: 61% extremely serious (O*NET Work Context)
- There is steady pressure from turnaround times, especially from the ED and surgery. Time pressure: 63% every day (O*NET Work Context)
- Frustrated callers are a weekly event, often when you reject a sample or a result takes longer. Dealing with unpleasant, angry, or discourteous people: 53% once a week or more but not every day (O*NET Work Context)
How people get into it
A bachelor's degree in medical laboratory science or a related science (52% of O*NET respondents say a bachelor's is required), with a clinical practicum, then national certification such as ASCP MLS. Some states also require a license.
The Firstday trial, easy to hard
Three simulated tasks with AI coworkers who message you, react to your work and coach with questions. Nobody scores you.
What the trial can't show: This trial does not cover pipetting, loading and running analyzers, making and reading slides under a real microscope, tube testing for blood typing, handling biohazard specimens in protective gear, or night and weekend shifts. It covers result review, quality control decisions, antibody workups on paper and phone communication. You act as a laboratory science student on rotation under a certified technologist; all patients and results are fictional.
Reading about it is one thing.
Find out how the work feels to you before you spend on a degree, course or job change. Your first trial is free.
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Job details on this page are built from O*NET OnLine, 29-2011.00. This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.