Is Clinical Laboratory Science right for me?

While the very idea of getting into a field that is actually hiring right now can be appealing, it is good to know that it is a job that you will enjoy going to. There are a variety of personality types in the clinical lab- introverts, extroverts, type A, or type B- whatever you are. The underlying interest in clinical laboratory scientists is solving problems. Before you start thinking of the story problems that they torment us with all throughout our childhood in math classes, I should tell you that these problems are nothing like those. The types of problems we look at in the clinical lab are more to do with the lab results and instrumentation.

For instance, Bob's potassium level is 9.0 mEq/L. For those of you who don't know, this value is not exactly compatible with life, so unless Bob is indeed a cadaver in the morgue, there is something wrong with this picture. The first place we are going to look to solve this problem is the serum itself. With a potassium level this high (normal is approximately 3.5-5.0 mEq/L), you are probably going to find the serum is almost the same bright red color as the blood itself rather than being a pale yellow color. This is an indication that the blood cells were lysed during the collection of the blood rendering this potassium value completely inaccurate. This can be a problem with the patient's blood, but more than likely it is an issue with the phlebotomist's technique. The solution to this problem? Unfortunately for Bob, the blood needs to be redrawn.

If talking about potassium and blood turns you away, let's talk about microbiology. Imagine all the bugs you can't normally see because they're microscopic. But when you put a non-sterile item on some agar and incubate it, all these bugs grow up into visible colonies all over the agar. It might look something like this:


Cool, right? One of my favorite things to do is take a plate that looks like this, only with lots of different things on it (this plate is only growing one thing) and run tests on them to figure out what's growing. This is how we figure out whether you should take amoxicillin or the z-pack for you ear ache.

Another department that might interest you is the blood bank. There is nothing quite like getting word from the emergency room that they have a patient who is bleeding severely and needs blood. You have a short amount of time to determine this patients blood type, make sure they don't have any abnormal antibodies, and then find crossmatch-compatible blood for them. If you do find an abnormal antibody in the patient's blood - then you've got to find out what it is and decide whether or not it's significant or not before transfusing blood into the patient.

These are just a few examples of the types of problems that we solve in the clinical lab everyday. If you enjoy jigsaw puzzles, sudoku, kakuro, or maybe even solving a good math problem, you might enjoy working in the clinical lab. Or if you frequently find yourself trying to solve other people's life problems - any kind of problems - you could very easily enjoy clinical laboratory science!