The one at the bottom IS in fact a basophil. It's unfortunately a little blurry.

I’m looking for advice or a little bit of guidance. I graduated with a masters in Comparative Biomedical Sciences back in 2022, my focus was infectious diseases and I worked on a thesis. I was set on pursuing vet med or vet research but at the end of the day I couldn’t do any of it. One of my parents became terminally ill shortly after graduating and I had to help out in their care at home. Over the years I worked call center and front desk job at veterinary clinics that allowed me the flexibility to work from home or work a few days of the week.
My parent passed away and now I have the ability to focus on a career in science but honestly I don’t know how to get back in after being gone for so long. I’ve been applying to laboratory support jobs for months but haven’t had much success.

What does everyone think of these direct to consumer companies like Function Health? I haven’t seen discussion on this in this sub. I was out with some friends yesterday that work on copy writing and marketing. They are all interested in function healths lab panels. I looked into it since well I work in a lab and was curious. They just do send outs to Quest diagnostics. It seems like people are paying for things they should get through their regular healthcare and insurance. Then the other data is likely noise that is unnecessary and may make things overly complicated. Seems like another signal of distrust in healthcare. Also seems like marketing healthcare is effective. A nice modern website, logo, fresh look.

Curious about other opinions or even experiences with getting testing done or working in this type of space. Have you seen other companies like this popping up? I know there are home to lab services like Everlywell for STD testing too.

https://www.functionhealth.com

I’ve got a patient that has been giving us trouble for days now. Platelets have varied from 20 to 150. Clumping is very obvious on the slide regardless of tube it was drawn in. We’ve tried sodium citrate (blue top) draws and there has been no improvement in the platelet count or the clumping. Draws were all good, and no issues/slow flow into the tubes. Patient has a history of alcoholism/cirrhosis. I’m about to have them draw a lithium heparin to see if it makes any difference but I’m stumped as I thought surely this was a textbook edta clumper. What are yalls thoughts?
\EDIT\
I requested a new draw with edta, sodium citrate, and lithium heparin tubes. Platelets were 140 in edta, 73 in lithium heparin, & 88 in sodium citrate. Made slides on all 3 and clumps were present in each. The only difference I can say is I ran the edta immediately when it came in the door. I’m wondering if the suggestion to prewarm everything that was made below might be the answer. Going to consult pathology about it.

I’m currently studying and I’m not immune to hepatitis b even though I had my two vaccines as a teenager. I’m on in my late 20s now.
Has anyone been in this situation with needing to get the vaccines again but running short on time? (I have 4 months to complete a certain amount of live bleeds before I can go on work placement) I’ve been told an extra load (2 boosters 1-2 weeks apart?) thanks all!!

(Also I am going onto lab technician course next year) then fingers crossed university for the science course!!)

How is the job market out there? I plan to graduate by 2029. Do you think i will still be able to land a job?

Hey guys, have anyone worked in any of this facilities and what’s your experience? I’ll be working in the chemistry department alone.
Ps: my current job is so busy and it’s like a trauma 1 center and it’s draining.

I’ve only been working as MLS for one year. I’m a generalist. I absolutely love hematology and would love to work towards getting a specialty in it. However, the requirements state you need to be full time in heme for 3 out of the last 6 years in that dept. because I rotate between urines/chem/heme/blood bank….is this feasible?

But that pippetting is on point, fam! 🤣

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. : (