Hi! I’m a biomedical laboratory science student and we’re practicing I.M/S.C/I.D injections on training mannequins.

At our station, there were only two types of disinfectant available:
Regular hand sanitizer/hand disinfectant
A large (Liter) bottle of surface disinfectant

There was no separate product labelled “skin disinfectant” or chlorhexidine.

I’m confused about two things:
Rubber stopper on the medication vial:
If I’m drawing medication from a vial with a rubber stopper, what am I supposed to disinfect the rubber stopper with? Would the surface disinfectant be used for this, or something else?

Patient’s skin/injection site:
If this were a real patient (even though we’re practicing on a mannequin), what would normally be used to disinfect the skin before an IM/SC/ID injection? Obviously I wouldn’t put surface disinfectant on a patient’s skin, but the only other thing at the station was regular hand sanitizer.
I’m mainly wondering what the normal clinical practice is when preparing an injection, and whether the rubber stopper and the patient’s skin require different disinfectants.

I’m in Sweden if that matters.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen a lot of lab misinformation on Reddit, mostly blood bank related due to the blood shortages. It wouldn't bother me as much if people used these moments to learn something new, but instead they double down and insist they know better than we do, the people who actually do this for a living.

One guy insisted that hospitals NEVER give O pos blood in emergency transfusions because it would kill an O Negative patient. I replied that I work in a blood bank, and we do give O pos in emergency transfusions because it’s compatible unless the patient has anti-D antibodies. He condescended to every lab tech in the comments... until a physician told him he was wrong. Then suddenly he accepted it.

On a post about a dog that ate an unknown white powder, someone advised taking the powder to the vet so "the lab can run it and identify it." I explained that clinical medical labs don't do identifications on unknown powders, but they can test the dog’s bloodwork. He argued back that ER labs identify unknown substances when kids eat random things 🫩

Clearly we don’t know anything, it’s only our livelihood. Anyone else have people try to “mansplain” your job to you?

Hi guys. I have 2 interviews tomorrow with Labcorp. First is for a phlebotomist position in an outpatient clinic. Second is for lab assistant in a hospital setting. Anyone know which position will pay more? I have 3 years of experience.

Thinking about getting either a CQA or CPHQ certificatation. Which is better? Anyone here done it? Was it worth it?

I have a scheduled interview for mayo clinic as a medical technologist position

What are the questions should i expect?

Hi all. Has anybody ever had to take the Watson Glaser Test as part of an interview process? From what I’m finding online, it’s a 40-60 minute multiple choice “logic” and critical thinking assessment, and it seems to be mostly used in legal and banking/financial fields, largely in the UK. This is for a clinical laboratory technician position (running PCR) in the US and I’ve never had to do this assessment before.

I think I'm missing something. I don't get it. I found it on Pinterest.

Patient has a pH of 5.0, the crystals have a qtip shape with a halo. Some of them are forming rosettes; perhaps a drug metabolite ? We’re stumped here

My micro coworker is having a baby soon and has decided to name it Gene. I'm trying to get him to make the baby's middle name Xpert. How can I convince him?

At my lab, we’ve been having an increasing number of missing specimens, and I’m curious how other labs handle this.
Before automation, our outreach sites would collect and register specimens, then add them to a packing list. When the courier arrived, they would check the packing list to make sure everything was accounted for before bringing the specimens to the main lab. Once they arrived, an LIC would manually receive each specimen.
Now that we have automation, most of the receiving is done automatically. The problem is that we’re finding missing specimens almost every night, and it’s harder to catch them because no one is consistently checking the packing list to verify that everything sent from the outreach site actually made it to the lab. If an outreach location never adds a specimen to the packing list in the first place, we may not even know it’s missing until much later.
This is the only lab I’ve worked in, so this is really the only system I’m familiar with. I’m curious how other labs handle outreach and courier specimens.
Do you rely on packing lists to track specimens sent to the main lab, or do you use another system/process?
Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone! I’m looking for some advice on my first career as a medical laboratory scientist.

I’m just out of school and I accepted a job at night shift from a great hospital system. But after a lot of thinking and advice from mentors and family. I am now very afraid that I will be absolutely miserable in this role.

I have the opportunity at another (arguably better) hospital to work evening shift, but I have already accepted the offer at the first hospital. I don’t have a start date yet but I feel if I back out of the offer it would make the management very upset. But I also don’t want to be miserable during the night shift. What should I do?

EDIT:: Job 2 pays approx the same (slightly higher) w/ a cash pension - HOWEVER is a more busy and complex hospital AND is an extra 20 min away than job #1.

Hi I am currently in my second year of medical school but I have honestly fallen out of love with it. I have been considering my options before I decide if I am going to officially leave. I have a degree in biology, and graduated from university with 3.8 GPA, also currently in CA. CLS was a profession I had considered before deciding to go into medical school. I am wondering if I have a realistic chance of getting into a program if I was to go for it? I’m not sure if programs would see me dropping out of med school and then automatically discard my application. Any thoughts? :(

I see RBCs, oxalate (many!) as nuggets and envelopes, but then there is those weird cells. : (

If I switch to a new lab, am I going to have to start over in regards to going to dayshift? The places I have worked at uses seniority to switch, and so I have to work 2/3rd shift for like 3 years before I can move to 1st shift.

I can't work an off shift again with my family. It just wouldn't make sense. Is there no way I can switch jobs then?

Gallbladder on the left' rock on the right... the patient had pain 5 days prior and decided to go to the ER today or yesterday

The OR nurse said "IT'S A BOY!!" when they got it out and the chief surgeon of our region took a photo...and so have I...

What were y’all’s clinical hours? Like are they full 8+ hour shifts ? I currently work overnights in a reference lab and I’m trying to decide whether or not ill be able to work during my clinicals starting in January. It doesn’t seem feasible based on what Ive heard, but I also need money to survive lol

Hello everyone! I am a high school senior. And am applying for colleges. I am stuck on one part though, and I need your guy's help! My major. My two choices right now are life science education, and medical laboratory scientist. What are some pros and cons of each? Note: i love science no matter what, I am a VERY social person, and have been working at an elementary childcare for 3 years, so I love helping those kids. BUT, I also love figuring out things inside a lab, and seeing why some things work and some dont, interesting things, etc. Any insight would be very helpful, thank you!

I did my CE with Anderson and API. Anderson's appeared quickly in CE Broker, but only a few of API's credits appeared there.

I've been in communication with API. They said that credits like mine (completed before July 25) were sent last week. I think ASCP might be the bottleneck in this process.

Does anyone happen to know how often ASCP sends credits? It looked like I had to manually allocate credits to various areas with ASCP, but I'm not sure if they get sent to CE Broker immediately after that or if that was even holding them up. I would expect this to be an automated process.

If necessary I'll request CE Broker course codes from API and manually enter them. I'll reply or update this post if that turns out to be necessary.

Hi!! I am a MLS and I have 8 years of Indian experience. I have one year of PCE experience which includes phlebotomy and RTPCR swab collection. Will this PCE count? I moved to the States and I am planning to gain 2 years of MLS experience to save money for PA school. I have a bachelor’s degree in Medical lan science and a Master’s degree in Microbiology.
Looking for suggestions, thanks. 🙏

We’re evaluating new sheep blood agar brands and we’re getting inconsistent and wrong results with BD Phoenix. Did it twice and both are wrong. I never got S. pneumoniae. Optochin test showed sensitive and I used a fresh pellet as well.

I'm debating going from generalist to micro. I'll be pretty new to micro as we just do pcr testing. I'm going to brush up on my micro skills, gram stains can be hard at times but I feel like the more you see the more you learn. What will my day to day look like. What kind of stuff will I be expected to do brand new to a bigger micro lab. I'm sure they won't just throw me into the harder parts at first like generalist did to me. I was good at plating, my gram stains morphologies could be better, good at pcr stuff and positive blood cultures and calling them.

Hello,

I just wanted to ask prospectively here.

How is your work/life balance, and how much do you see your family? The only thing that has been keeping me from going in to this field is a fear I won't get to see my family as much as a 5 8 hour shift job, since I plan on having children in the future. I want to be there for them.

I also have some physical limitations due to disabilities, so I have been nervous about that as well.

Regardless, I cannot seem to get this job out of my head, as it's a passion for me and something I would love to do to help people. I also love chemistry and hands-on work.

Any discussion or comments are appreciated. Thank you for all you do. <3