My lass day of class is 5/10 for my MLS degree. I really want to take my BOC immediately after I graduate (like literally the day after my last day of classes). When did everyone take theirs? Do you recommend waiting to study for a few more days or just getting it over with?

What fun games does your lab do for lab week? We're trying to come up with ideas and drawing a blank.

We're a smaller rural lab, only 9 of us in all.

Im a new tech and I really didn't see any body fluids in school or during my clinical rotations. I am having trouble with certain body fluid diffs, especially ascites fluid for some reason. are there any good resources I can use to learn a bit more? I can obviously tell what extremely malignant cells look like...

One time at my previous hospital I was working the urine bench, and I had a culture that was 100k pure pinpoints. I was super busy so I just threw it on the maldi to see what it was. The ID came back as some rotifer species, which surprised me, so i repeated it and sure thing, rotifers. I did a wet mount and once again, rotifers. I asked our medical director to make sure I should report this, since rotifers live in fresh water and I don't think they're pathogens to humans? Anyway he said to report it so I did. Sometimes I wonder if the patient submitted pond water as their urine sample? Could they really have had a rotifer infection? So weird. This was a large academic medical center so we did see weird shit a lot but damn. Have any other micro people here found rotifers in a specimen before??

I’m interviewing for an MLS II position and this will be my first time interviewing for one. What should I expect? Like how will it be different from an MLS I interview? Any insight appreciated.

I work in a small, rural hospital, so you work in all departments and have to be competent at drawing blood. We keep raising our wages to retain people, but the newer ones still mostly leave. It’s gotten to where our pay is better than the biggest hospitals near us. We just need a couple reliable people (most likely for second shift).

But does anyone else feel like the heparin tube should be purple and EDTA should be green?

Hey y’all I’m a night tech and I run our multiqual on our architects. The last few evenings our lipase is flagging outside 3 SD. I will take the exact same carrier and QC slap it back on and it’ll be in range. Tried recalibration, new reagent, new QC, ensuring QC was room temp, no bubbles. Doesn’t happen to any of the other 30 reagents on, just lipase and on both levels. Any idea what’s happening? It’s not happening with pt values i ran several in a row to test. I’m out of theories and this pattern i so odd i feel like it’s a simple solution I’m not seeing. This is an architect c4000 btw

Any ideas for micro related lab week games?

Is it some kind of protein? I have seen smears where you can barely make out the red cells because of the staining. I am new to looking at bone marrow so I’m not sure if this is a stupid question

Mycobacterium szulgai

Anybody here knows whats the fastest way to renew my ASCPi license? its been expired for 5 years now since I went on a different path. Thanks!

As an IEMLT with 10 years of experience, and I'm looking into completing the PLA process for CSMLS certification. Have you been through this before? If you have any tips or advice, I'd really appreciate it!

What is the ratio of women / men in your respective laboratories as laboratory workers? In my country the ratio is very high for women. So much so that when I started studying the degree it was 80% female entrants. In my current workplace, we are 6 women and 1 men. It is also attributed to the high percentage of women, the low salaries that the profession has in general (I am talking about my region, I am not generalizing).

I am currently getting my associates degree in a city college. I am almost done getting my associates, i was wondering if RCI is a good place to take an MLT program? But also before I finished my associates i am planning to get i to their phlebotomy class/programm as well. Am i in the right path?

I graduated in may of 2023 and have been at a federal hospital since October of 2023 My shift is 4-12am Monday through Friday no weekends. The shift seemed great before I actually started working and I realized there’s not a lot of work life balance. I’m wondering if my issues are universal or just specific to this VA.

• no one really cares about evening or overnight shift except for our supervisor
• was encouraged to still come to work despite having the flu
• reported coworkers for saying racially charged or political things at work and nothing has been done
• nightly water outages so there’s no flushing bathrooms in the entire hospital, (no portable bathrooms either)
• HR good for nothing unless they want something for you (in that case they give you a time limit and strict deadlines despite if your sick)

-outdated instruments which make normal work take more time

• we manually have to verify ever single test we do

-texts from my boss when I’m not working -was forced to put in sick leave so I could leave and use a sanitary bathroom cause we had none -manager tells me my job is on the line cause im late on paperwork (I was sick when the emails were sent about it and we can’t check our emails outside of work)

• night shift being over scrutinized for things day shift gets away with

Am I being over dramatic or would these things make yall want leave? Any advice helps!

At times my shift seems like it's either feast or famine; mostly depending on how busy the ED is that evening. I'm very good at multitasking and like to keep my mind busy at all times; feels like I should be doing something more than browsing reddit and reading wikipedia.

What can I do to improve my "worth" or earning potential during those "slow" moments? Google certificates? Some sort of online LIS training? Getting a degree in Health management or something?

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Hi lab lads and ladies,

I am currently going to school in California to earn my Bachelors in Laboratory science. After completing my degree I plan to become a Medical Laboratory Scientist!

What my dumb question is... if I get my license in California, I cannot move to another state and use my Ca license.. right? Id have to re-test in whatever state I move to, to get that state's license? if anyone has any experience with all of this I would really appreciate all the advice. Thanks!

Hello

I am currently a graduate student, and recently learnt about clinical biochemistry postdoctoral fellowship programs. I was really hoping to connect with someone who could give me more insight about the programs (especially what it takes to be competitive) as well as the job afterwards.

Thanks so much!

Hello everyone! So I live in California and find it extremely difficult to find a job in the lab or as a phlebotomist. Does anyone here work in Oklahoma? I've heard that people have better luck looking for job experience out in the Midwest. I have family out there and plan to live there for a while to gain experience then come back to California with hopefully a better chance at getting a job. If you live out there, how's the job market, and was it easy to get a job with no experience? I do have my BLS certificate as well as a CPT-1 license.

I am applying for EPIC Beaker analyst jobs in the US. I already have Beaker AP and CP proficiency and working at an organization using EPIC Beaker since 2022. I realize I need an offer letter and would have to apply for a work visa. I have been answering "No" to this question when applying: Are you eligible to work in US? I haven't been able to get an interview so far because of my answer to this prescreening question (I think). Technically I am not eligible currently but would be if given an offer letter and applied for sponsorship. Any guidance would be appreciated.

I know there are many threads that show California techs make the most, 100k, 120k, 160k+. I'm currently licensed in NY and want to get an idea of how much I can expect to make if I decided to get my California license. California doesn't recognize part of my education so I'll have to go back to school for about a year to get licensed, so I want to see if it's worth the effort. I currently make $55/hr at a 500 bed community hospital in Manhattan. This is without shift differential, at a union hospital in the 5-10 year pay bracket.

I'd like to know what the typical hourly rate is in California, in a major city, in a hospital or private setting with about 10 years of experience? I see people saying they make 170k/year but then mention it's with overtime and shift differential which doesn't mean a whole lot.

Is it possible to use a microEDTA samples for WADIANA operation? If so, how do you perform the procedure?

Hello, I am a current MLS student earning my masters in Medical Laboratory sciences after which I’ll be able to take my ASCP cert. I am currently living in San Antonio, Texas but want to move to Houston for work after graduation. Are there any more veteran MLSs in Houston who might now expected pay ranges for some of the larger hospitals? Or anybody who has any advice for someone who will be entering the lab within the next year and a half.

I'm a new grad who has been working in a blood bank since December 2023. I'm relatively new, so I don't really know what most protocols look like at other hospitals. I work at a 1000+ bed hospital with a BMT clinic, so I get to see quite a few unusual and weird cases.

One thing I was wondering about was one of our policies. Whenever an Rh negative patient receives Rh positive products (in an emergent situation, either an MTP going past 10+ rounds, or they are a male issued an Rh positive blood product by ED staff from our emergency unit fridge in the ED), they are considered "POSAP" (positive Rh blood products approved), they can continue to receive Rh positive blood products for the duration of their entire stay at the hospital, until discharge. Once they are discharged and come back, they will get Rh negative blood products.

I asked some of my coworkers and they weren't able to tell me why we continue to give Rh positive blood products to these Rh negative blood products in these situations, like an extended hospital stay. Maybe there is some research out there that helps explain it better?

So pretty much what it says in the title. I’ve only worked in one lab for about 6 months now and it seems like something is always having issues or malfunctioning. We have two of every machine so that we can always run stuff but I swear it seems so ridiculous how often we are having to be like oh don’t run Troponin on this machine the QC won’t pass or please use the other blood gas machine because this one sees everything as a clot.

It’s not constant but it does seem like we will have a good week then I’ll work a week or two with nothing but issues.

I mean don’t get me wrong the troubleshooting does break up the monotony of just running samples but some days I just want a simple day and not spend 4 hours trying to figure out why the machines aren’t running vancomycin.

Little more context - I’m at a hospital lab at about 230 beds (I think).

I have an opportunity to go to the Siemens training this summer. Would it be more worth it to go to the basic training or to the trouble shooting? I have about a year on this machine and know all the basics and can do some troubleshooting. I do the weekly maintenance and all the calibrations on the machine. I just don’t know which one would be more beneficial. Anyone have any insights?