27| What Is a Medical Laboratory Scientist?

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Transcript

Welcome to the Black Woman in Bloom Podcast, a semi-monthly podcast designed to uplift, encourage and empower Black Women by exploring wellness topics that promote self-care and mindfulness. I’m your host, TaReon Jael, a Certified Health Educator and Medical Lab Scientist. For more information, please visit blackwomaninbloom.com. While I hope you enjoy listening to and learning from the podcast, please remember that it is not a substitute for a relationship with a licensed healthcare provider. 

Hello and welcome to episode 27. 

If you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you’ve heard me mention being a clinical laboratory scientist.  I’ve mentioned different workplaces and some of my experiences, but I realize that I’ve never actually talked about my profession. I’ve never actually explained what a clinical lab scientist does or how I got into the work in the first place. So I figured now would be the perfect time because when this podcast episode goes live, we’ll be at the tail end of Medical Laboratory Professionals Week 2023. We call it Lab Week for short. We tend to work behind the scenes, so this is our chance to give folks a glimpse into what we do daily and celebrate our contributions to the healthcare system. 

Before I get into the story, I want to point out that you’ll hear me say clinical lab science, medical technology, and medical laboratory science. Throughout the years, the profession has undergone some changes regarding our job title, but just know that these titles all describe the same thing.

In middle or early high school, I attended a summer camp in my hometown, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). So this summer camp was designed to introduce girls to careers in STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. I attended a session in the lab of the student health center.  

In this summer camp session, the other girls and I spent about half an hour with a woman who worked in the lab. She described her daily workflow and showed us a petri dish with a red agar in it. At the time, I didn’t know what agar was, so it looked like red jello in a circular plastic dish.  She explained that when a student comes to the Student Health Center with a sore throat, the doctor will take a swab of their throat. She or another scientist will streak the swab onto the agar in this petri dish. If the germ that causes strep throat grows on the agar, they’ll be able to tell the doctor what’s there, and the doctor will then be able to prescribe the student antibiotics to clear the infection. 

I was instantly intrigued by this story, and I remember wanting to hear more about what other things she did in the lab, but our sessions were designed to be short so that we couldn’t stay long.

After the summer camp day, I told my mom about the lab session  and how I was interested and intrigued by the lab. But I couldn’t remember the woman’s job title, and I’m unsure if she even told us her official job title. 

My Mom, now a retired RN, had a good idea of the career field I was discussing. I’m telling this part of the story from my perspective and from what I remember, but if I asked Mom, she’d fill in many details I’ve forgotten or parts of the story that I don’t even know. She was later talking to one of her co-workers, who said, “Sounds like your daughter is interested in studying microbiology.” So Mom started looking into information on undergrad programs for me and the job outlook for microbiologists. At some point, another coworker of my Mom’s suggested that I consider studying Medical Technology because becoming a Medical Technologist would offer better job opportunities, and studying Microbiology would fall under the umbrella of Medical Technology. And also, this particular co-worker’s first career was as a Medical Technologist, and she seemed to love the profession and she was very enthusiastic about recruiting potential future Medical Technologists.  

My Mom narrowed her search and gathered information on medical technology undergrad programs. She gave me the time and space to review the information and read about the different options and opportunities within the field. 

Once I started reading more about Medical Technology, I realized that that was the field I wanted to study. I don’t remember considering any other areas after that. I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to pursue a career in Medical Technology. 

Now I want to tell you how I ended up studying Medical Technology at Tennessee State. In the fall of 2002, I was a senior in high school, and Tennessee State and Grambling came to Las Vegas for the Silver Dollar Classic. My family and I went to the Battle of the Bands and the football game. Now when I tell you that the now Grammy award-winning Tennessee State University Aristocrat of Bands did their thing at that Battle of the Bands. I mean, they did their thing. 

This is no shade to Grambling because they’re world famous. They did their thing that night because we all know Grambling can get down. When they show up, they show out. They did their thing as well, but something about the way the Aristocrat of Bands carried themselves resonated with me. After that, I told myself I needed to know more about this school. I think I need to be at somebody's HBCU. So later, my mom looked at Tennessee State’s undergrad programs and found that they had a medical technology program. So TSU was one of the universities I applied to, and I was obviously accepted. They offered me a full tuition scholarship. I was torn between staying in Vegas to attend UNLV or moving to Nashville to attend TSU. Ultimately, I wanted the HBCU experience and the experience of going away for college. So I chose TSU, and the rest is history.

And what’s interesting about my entry into Clinical Lab Science is that I took a straightforward approach, but most of the folks I have worked with have told me they stumbled upon the profession. And that's the beauty of this and even other careers within the clinical lab. You don't have to complete a traditional four-year program like I did. If you want to learn more about becoming a clinical lab professional, I’ve added links to some Clinical Lab programs and resources in the show notes.

Now that I’ve told the story about how I got into the profession, I want to give a general description of my job and what I do daily.

The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science states that Medical Lab Scientists “work to analyze a variety of biological specimens. They are responsible for performing scientific testing on samples and reporting results to physicians.  Medical laboratory scientists perform complex tests on patient samples using sophisticated equipment. The data they find plays an important role in identifying and treating cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other medical conditions. It is estimated 60 to 70 percent of all decisions regarding a patient's diagnosis, treatment, hospital admission, and discharge are based on the results of the tests medical laboratory scientists perform.”

That’s the sort of textbook definition or job description. But when people ask me what I do, I usually try to start by relating what I do with what is already familiar to most people. Most of us are familiar with going to the doctor and at some point, having the doctor order labs like a CBC and chem panel. After that doctor's visit, you’ll go to the lab, and a phlebotomist will draw your blood. And then, a few hours or days later, you and your doctor get your test results, and the doctor, hopefully, contacts you to discuss the results. Well, the Clinical Lab Scientists are the people that run the tests and get the results to the doctor. That’s my straightforward explanation of what I do, but much more goes on each day. I’m not going to go into more detail, because I want this episode to be a quick glimpse into Clinical Lab Science and how I got into it. If you’d like to know more, please email me at tareon@wellnessforblackgirls.com. 

Head to blackwomaninbloom.com/episodes/27 to check out the show notes. I’ve included links to all sorts of resources in the show notes. There’s information about careers in the clinical lab, clinical lab programs, and lab week. If you or someone you know is interested or may be interested in pursuing a career in the lab, then go ahead and check those resources out.