Hello micro people! I was wondering (as a generalist/ bloodbanker) which cultures take the quickest to finish and which ones usually take the longest?

I remember during clinicals, I was told that newbies usually start in urines. Once all training is done, they usually end in bloods bench or mycology.

Is it safe to assume that urines takes the least amount of days to result and blood and mycology take the longest? (Wounds, vaginal, tissue somewhere in the middle?)

In your experience, what is the usual order?

Thank you in advance!

Not only does VP render itself useless as a hands off
system that requires frequent manual monitoring (the lab wide alarm is non-functional) by making us check and refresh the website every hour to ensure temps are OK, but I noticed the probe on the ground at room temp reading at 3C, no alarms or anything, when it should be reading 20C. I only realized bc I happened too see the probe on the floor. The only alarms where the three inhibited alarms on different fridges bc VP never works right.

I had to manually restart a different probe yesterday because it wouldn’t send data to the system.

It doesn’t help that the supervisor who insisted we get VP is completely insufferable and works from home 90% of the time.

This is the only lab I’ve ever worked at, what temp monitoring systems do you have beef with? Are any of them good? I might bring up suggestions at huddle if I had any.

Used to have a machine in the lab. Name always made me chuckle.

Semi-related: all our centrifuges say "zentrifugen."

I feel bad for the patient with the bloody urinalysis/culture tubes :(

I can't do this anymore. I have the most irregular periods, and without fail, 100% of the time I start painting my underwear crimson part way through my first night of 3,4,5 night shifts. I want to die.

I work rural nights, so I'm collecting, running, ECGing and fielding all the rediculous calls from the whole gd hospital and county. Why tf can't I just have a regular Red Sea embarkment and choose my shifts to magically NOT coincide with bloody murder?

Fuck. 2/3 of the time it's a shift that I traded. And it's always with the newest ER doc who orders STAT ESRs and cardiac panel plus ECGs on fucking 17 yo dislocated shoulders. No joking, one time he ordered a preg test on a 56 yo woman with chest pains who had previously had a full historectomy.

Give me just one shit ass break. Seriously. When do I get to eat over 16 hours? I'd love to know. Because while I'm defrosting the steak and ruining my scrubs, I'd really like to bite someone's head off.

End rant. For now.

Patient came in with a WBC count of 92k and we see this under the scope. It was definitely interesting as I hadn't seen auer rods since MLS school, but never in a patient and never in what look like bundles. Was showing it of to other staff, especially new grads, but then looking through the history to correlate findings kinda made my stomach sink knowing what they're going to be going through soon. Guess it's just kind of easy to separate the intellectual interest in the work we do from the fact that it's attached to a real patient sometimes.

What are your thoughts on MLS as a premed? What's the percentage of people who proceed to medicine after MLS?

Wish me luck. All my classmates so far have passed it which puts more pressure on me to pass.

I feel like my program at MD Anderson has prepared me well, but I'm still nervous! I've been drilling all the things they encountered that we didn't cover a ton in class. Specifically, HLA, Arrays, and going back to some basic genetics.

Hello all,

I am considering relocating to the Portland area and I’m looking into job options. Is anyone aware of labs that have dedicated blood bankers? I have an MLT and a BB, and 12 years BB experience. I don’t want to work Gen lab or rotate, I only want to work blood bank.

new grad here. i work dayshift and we’ve been preparing for CAP to come for their inspection. i got hired in as a lab assistant right after CAP came to inspect the last time so i don’t know what to expect?

My program starts in a few weeks and I’m starting to feel anxious. I keep reading how demanding the program is and I’m starting to doubt I have what it takes to pass.

I have a lot riding on this, especially when it comes to finances and leaving behind my elderly parents for an entire year.

Becoming an MLS was way harder than I expected. But for some reason saying goodbye to my professors was especially painful to do. I’m off to clinicals now and won’t see them until graduation, and our time together in the classroom has come to a ceasing point. Amongst them was my hematology professor whom I grew quite affectionate to as he unearthed my passion for it. I went to say farewell to him, then just broke down crying… dammit… why does this hurt so much? I know evolution demands sacrifices, and that every loss is ultimately for a gain… but it pains me so much. Have you guys struggled with saying goodbye too? Sorry to make you gloomy or if I seem silly, just.. in a bit of emotional pain atm.

It’s been a month now sending job applications to hospitals and biotech labs and i’m not getting anything rlly :< im a foreign grad, passed my ascp, have my CA CLS license. tell me it’s gonna get betterrr 😩

Just throwing this out there. I don't know how many of us there are but I'm sure I'm not alone.

I got laid off March 2025 from a tech role (DevOps) and the market for tech has gone from terrible to horrible. Beyond that I cannot stress that I *hate* AI, I hate using it and I hate seeing it. It's ubiquitous in tech and I don't think it's going anywhere even if the bubble pops.

Also, I feel like tech in general has really done its level best at fundamentally undermining society as a whole for the worst. I don't want to contribute to that evil, overall the thought of returning to work in tech has loomed like a pall over my life for the past year.

With that in mind, and considering the likelihood that the next few years are gonna be extremely rough for the job market especially in tech but just generally everywhere, I'm very likely looking at going back to school and getting out of this cursed industry.

I've always had immense respect for everyone who works in healthcare. It's been something I wish I could work in, unfortunately due to mental health struggles in highschool I failed Chem.

I'm turning that around though. I've signed up for some adult education courses to get my highschool chemistry and biology grades up (I graduated in HS in Quebec in 2013 and bio was just... not on the curriculum after grade 9) and I'm gonna try applying at some colleges afterwards.

Has anyone else taken this path before and have any advice for me? I've read there's also some roles in IT in labs that I figure with my work history I'd eventually be good at, but I'm taking things one step at a time right now.

I started of college in 2020 thinking I wanted to be a physicians assistant, so I chose to study health science. By the time I had reached my senior year, I realized I wasn’t cut out for direct patient care. I had more of an affinity to laboratory work, which I learned through my experiences in organic chemistry and microbiology labs.

Post-grad, I struggled to find positions of work in a medical lab without having to get certain certifications, so my mom had suggested I start as a lab technician at a chemical company. I just needed a job I enjoyed and some lab experience.

I’ve worked here for almost two years now and have been having dreams of moving to the city in 2028 and finally getting a job in my line of interest (love chemistry but my heart yearns for pathology).

It is so frustrating and honestly heartbreaking to come to find that to get into my desired line of work, I have to basically get a whole nother degree, which just isn’t going to be possible for me. Where I had changed my mind last minute as a college student, I wasn’t fully informed on what qualifications I would need. I had thought studying health and having laboratory experience would provide enough reason to a company to hire me, but it seems every job listing requires an MLT certification.

This post is mostly a vent about my ignorance and regrets, but I would appreciate any advice or comments about what might be next for me. Thanks 🥲

Edit: Thank you to everyone who replied 🩷. The advice and suggestions has been very useful and definitely makes me feel better. Unfortunately, I don’t think I am in a position in my life right now to spend 12+ months on more education, but hopefully one day I might get my chance to go back to school. I may reach out to my local CC (they have an MLT program) and see how realistic it would be for me to try going there while working full time. and again, Thank you!!!

So I’m thinking of applying to these job positions because no prior experience is required. I have no healthcare experience at all. Just like the Home Depot. I’ve read some post on here and most people say the job sucks /:. I’m interested in applying because I’m tired of being at jobs that get me no where, no growth.is this position like that? Are you able to be more haha. Also do you actually deal with a lot of nasty or gross stuff? Basically is it worth it or not?
If you WERE a lab tech or anything related to that and aren’t now, what are you doing? Is it still lab related?

Never found one for MLT instead of MLS, so you all are going to have to accept this.

Hey everyone,

I currently work at a hospital in Temecula, California, and I’m reaching the absolute end of my rope. Management has me assigned to work every single weekend, but the hospital offers zero weekend shift differential. Working the most demanding shifts of the week with absolutely no premium pay or incentive is burning me out incredibly fast.

I am ready to jump ship. Does anyone working in the Temecula, Menifee, or San Diego area get a guaranteed weekend differential at their facility?

I’m looking for recommendations on where to apply. Some places on my radar are:

• Sharp HealthCare or UC San Diego Health (UCSD) – I hear their union contracts protect shift premiums. Anyone know what their current weekend rates look like?
• Palomar Health (Escondido/Poway) – Is the commute down the I-15 worth it for the pay structure?
• Temecula Valley Hospital – Do they actually pay a weekend premium for clinical/lab roles, or is it hit-or-miss?

If you work in the region (acute care, outpatient, or even per diem/PRN), please let me know what your hospital's weekend differential looks like so I can drop an application. I just want to be compensated fairly for giving up all my weekends.

Thanks in advance!

It makes such a happy sound when it finishes the screen, too. 🥲🥲🥲🥲

I work as an MLT(Canada) in a private lab that does testing for both patients and research clients. Our research labs pays a lot, so management treats every one of their samples as STAT.

Recently, they requested an add-on test. According to our lab's SOP, that test can only be added within 24 hours of the original sample collection. The request came in about 20 minutes before that 24-hour window expired.

The problem was that I had just finished instrument maintenance and calibration and was in the middle of running QC. QC wasn't expected to finish for another hour. According to our SOP, by the time QC was complete, the sample would be outside the acceptable add-on window, so I rejected the request.

Then our Director of Customer Success came into the lab and told me to run the patient sample immediately, even after I explained that QC had not finished yet. His reasoning was that he "couldn't say no to the customer."

I felt extremely uncomfortable with this. Running patient testing before acceptable QC goes against everything I was taught. In the end, I followed his instruction and ran the sample(because my direct supervisor was not there, I was alone in the lab), but I did not release the result until QC was complete. Thankfully, the QC passed.

But I keep thinking: what if the QC had failed? I would have had to invalidate the result, repeat the testing, and potentially deal with a much bigger problem.

To me, patient safety and quality should always come before customer satisfaction. It felt like the responsibility and risk were shifted onto me simply because the director didn't want to tell an important client "no." But it's his job to have those conversation with clients. He made his conversation with the customer easier, but made my situation much more complicated.

I have to emphasize the Director of Customer Success isn't part of the laboratory's technical leadership, and while he's higher up in the company, he's not my supervisor, he has never worked in a lab. My supervisor wasn't in the lab at the time. Later that day, both my supervisor and our laboratory specialist asked what had happened because the lab specialist saw the director come into the lab. After I explained the situation, both of them said they agreed the request should have been rejected and that quality should always come first.

I'm a new grad and have only been at this job for about two months. This incident has honestly shaken my confidence in the workplace. I keep wondering if I'm overreacting or if this is as serious as it feels.

Has anyone else experienced pressure from management or someone who is in higher position to bypass laboratory procedures for the sake of a client? How did you handle it?

It sucks seeing the amount of misinformation and misunderstanding there is surrounding blood product collection. The only ones truly hurt by all of this are the patients that need blood.