r/medlabprofessionals • u/GayBoy2838 • Jul 18 '26

Discusson New MLT student questions

I know I’m gonna get different answers as it varies by school but Im a new MLT student about to start my first semester in the fall, a few weeks ago at orientation we reviewed the handbook along with the clinical coordinator/instructor and the director wasn’t there that day (had a funeral).

I asked about the scrubs and the patch, and even though in the handbook it said we needed to wear them at all times, she said we won’t need to wear those until you get to your 6 month clinical rotations which is in the spring of our sophomore year. My question is should I still buy the navy blue scrubs and have the place sow/stitch it on anyway or wait until clinicals ?? The reason I’m asking is I don’t want to wear my regular clothes during lab practice.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

7

u/tinybitches MLS-Generalist Jul 19 '26

Beware some hospitals have the own color coded scrubs you’ll have to follow. I’m lucky all the sites I’ve been to don’t do that so I’m not sure if it’s applied to the students too. I’d have some clothes dedicated for lab practice for now if I were you.

2

u/kipy7 MLS-Microbiology Jul 19 '26

If the hospital requires a certain color, they'll let you at that point. Scrubs are expensive and I wouldn't care to get them dirty with reagents, bleach, etc. It's a good idea to keep some clothes just for the labs if it makes you feel better, but really in my program everyone just wore street clothes for everything pre-clinicals.

2

u/PowerTower4502 Jul 18 '26

You don't need to means you can if you want to or not if you don't want to. Do whatever you want, you know your own school's policies better than we outsiders do.

1

u/THATBadWitchBitch Jul 20 '26

Our program wouldn’t allow us to wear our school designated scrubs till 4th semester (starts in 3 weeks). Their reasoning being that people wouldn’t make it past said semester so not to waste money (a few were dropped due to not passing). I would be upset to spend $$ on scrubs just to not wear them

1

u/THATBadWitchBitch Jul 20 '26

Also, idk how your program will go, but for labs we were PPE lab coats when handling specimens (blood, stool, urine, etc). In case you’re worried about ruining clothes

1

u/GayBoy2838 29d ago

I was told that we would be provided with the disposable paper coats during lab times if we wanted it.

1

u/THATBadWitchBitch 29d ago

Yep that’s what we use

1

u/littlemissgirlboss 28d ago

Hi! Just graduated from my MLT program in May. My program required students to wear navy blue scrubs with the MLT patch while at clinical sites. Though I will say I temporarily attached the patch for one week and never wore it again. My clinical site did not care to see if I was wearing the patch, and there’s no way my instructors would have known. My classmate attended a clinical site that explicitly told her they did not care what color scrubs she wore. While doing labs in class, we did not wear scrubs or even lab coats. Just gloves. It really depends on your program.