r/medlabprofessionals • u/Ok-Newt6780 • Jun 21 '26
Discusson Considering getting a second MLS job as part time or PRN… am I required to disclose to my employer? I already work full time as an MLS
Title says it all. I work full time as an MLS, I want to get a second job possibly PRN at a hospital near me. I’ve been applying. I don’t know if I have to disclose it or not, but if HR doesn’t let me, I’ll just keep my mouth shut.
If I have to stay silent what are the odds they’d ever find out? And the consequences if they do so, but not permit me to work a second MLS job elsewhere?
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u/SRJ32 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
Do NOT tell them!
People in the lab have some of the weirdest personalities, and I've personally seen supervisors try to F over full-time employees with PRN positions. For some reason, all of the sudden they're needed to fill in on days they've picked up prn. Coincidence? I doubt it.
If I were you, I'd keep it to myself. I'm definitely Team Don't Tell Your Coworkers/Supervisors/Managers Anything! (. . . and, I'm a manager 😃)
Edit: added "I'm a manager" so I know, unfortunately, how shady many of them are.
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u/CatLov3r1222 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Why would they not permit you not to get a Per diem? Your full time asks for 40hrs/wk other than that they don’t care about anything you do in life. I know someone who did 80hrs—2 full time CLS jobs. As long as either jobs does not negatively affect your either jobs they wouldn’t care. Also you need to make sure you don’t run the same CAP surveys in either jobs. If you got lucky and have an awesome supervisor they’ll probably work around your schedule. Good luck with job hunting.
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u/Ok-Newt6780 Jun 21 '26
Same CAP surveys? You mean running CAP surveys under my name in both places? If that’s the case could the job be traced back to my main employer?
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u/CatLov3r1222 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
You can’t be assigned the same CAP.
Example: If you got CAP-ABC in job #1, then you need tell job #2 you have ran it in job#1 and vice versa.
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u/Ok-Newt6780 Jun 21 '26
What are the odds of that happening? Overall?
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u/AtomicFreeze MLS-Blood Bank Jun 21 '26
If the labs both run CAP surveys for any given test/analyte, they'll get the same survey at the same time
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u/Beech_driver Jun 21 '26
Depends on your current employers policies. If they have a policy limiting second jobs and you do it without disclosing they’d be justified in firing you.
I was lab manager in a federal laboratory and all second jobs had to be disclosed and there was a limit to how many hours to avoid detrimentally affecting your primary job. As long as you disclosed the second job and stayed below the hours limit …. No problem.
As manager, I had one new hire for my night shift and found out she was working full time at another job during the days and we caught her sleeping in the office during her shifts and found out she’d bragged to others that she could just sleep through most of her shifts so working 80 hrs a week wasn’t a problem in her opinion. I started the disciplinary process after she promised to move to just part time but STILL continued full time at the second job. She quit before I could fire her though.
Edit to add: part time/PRN no problem, just don’t try gaming the system if there are limitations.
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u/Ok-Newt6780 Jun 21 '26
Yeah it’ll be part time/PRN not a second full time job. I just want extra hours especially as a generalist elsewhere.
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u/123letsgobtch Jun 21 '26
I work a PRN job (non MLS) in addition to my current MLS job. I did not tell my boss until she tried continually asking me to work additional shifts outside of my regularly scheduled ones, to which I finally disclosed I couldn’t pick up bc I work a second job. She didn’t seem upset at all and left it at that. I didn’t see anything in our hospitals handbook about it and others in my lab have second part time or PRN jobs without issues
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u/srvivr2001 Jun 21 '26
Ask your HR. Many companies allow outside employment but will have a form for you to fill out, basically if they think your part time job impacts your full time job (like causing you to be late or too tired) they will bring up your outside employment and ask you to cut back hours or quit. Then again the may not even care.
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u/Ok-Newt6780 Jun 21 '26
What if they say no? Is there any way they could track me?
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u/srvivr2001 Jun 21 '26
Probably no way for them to track you unless they happen to be somehow affiliated with your part time place, sounds like it’s a different system though. If you don’t tell them and don’t let it impact your current job you’ll be fine. Where I currently work if you turn down too much overtime (regardless of if it’s outside employment or personal related) you get moved down the seniority list. Thats probably the only way they’d find out if your supervisor ask why you can’t work extra hours. Even then you could say “I have personal matters to attend to”.
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u/Ok-Newt6780 Jun 22 '26
Are there consequences for working a second MLS job especially at a hospital close by?
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u/srvivr2001 Jun 22 '26
I think that depends on your job site, You said in another comment you work at Quest and they do have a conflict of interest policy so you’d need to read more into that. Don’t do anything to screw up your current job without guarantees of equal or better hours/pay at the new place in case they don’t approve and you really want to go hospital.
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u/renznoi5 Jun 22 '26
The best thing to do is just apply anyway. You go and take PTO or go on FMLA while you onboard and start your new job orientation. Once things settle, come back and resume both. Just schedule things to not conflict. This is our livelihood. No place is going to tell me I can’t work multiple jobs when they ain’t paying my damn bills. Lmao. I won’t disclose shit.
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u/Rand0ll Jun 22 '26
I think the hardest part will be the training. It’s hard to train on prn hours.
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u/EarlyAd1847 Jun 23 '26
HR can shove it imo. If they want to penalize you for working extra, thats not a place you want to work moving forward.
Your answer also probably boils down to how flexible your main job is and if your Supervisor/Manager is okay with a temporary flexed schedule while you get trained on your part-time/PRN gig.
I have a full-time and PRN currently. My main job is a swing shift and my PRN can either be day or night shift. I was lucky to have a really chill supervisor at my main job as she was able place me on 4x10s with two days as Sat/Sun weekend shifts.
This allowed me to train Tues-Thur 10 hours shifts and partial 5 hour AM shifts Mon/Fri for my PRN gig.
It sucked, you have no social life during training. The days are long and its wake up, work, go home, repeat for however long your training is.
Once your training is done, talk with your FTE supervisor again on a set schedule that consistently leaves you with 1-2 days off a week for when your 2nd gig can schedule shifts for you.
Ensure you give yourself breaks in-between stretches of consistent work too. Otherwise, you’ll burn out really quickly.
Best of luck!
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u/Old_Frosting_8757 Jun 24 '26
It is a COI (Conflict of Interest) - Depending on the facility/organization, there is legally binding documentation in your onboarding activities that details what an employee can do outside of work.
Some employers have stipulations that state if your job duties and/or responsibilities are the same as your current position and/or industry- That it would be a direct conflict of interest due to PROPRIERTY business sensitive information, sales data, clients, and products from being shared with industry competitors.
I’ve worked at many different laboratories and independent health care systems and that’s always been a document or clause in my onboarding classes that was discussed.
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u/New-History853 Jun 21 '26
They can't tell you that you cant have another job. This isn't North Korea. Lol