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ADVANCE Outlook: Lab Professionals

Would You Want to Be a Nurse?

Published July 2, 2011 11:03 PM by Matthew T. Patton
Occasionally, we post a question on our Facebook page that gets a lot of responses. On Thursday, we posted a question that sparked an interesting set of responses. That simple question was, "If you couldn’t be a laboratorian, would you want to be a nurse?" Overwhelmingly, the answer was "NO!"

Here are few of the selected responses thus far:

  • No, and it's comforting to see others feel the same way. Maybe it's a temperament thing....we all gravitated to lab work for a reason. And nursing doesn't hold any attraction to a lot of lab people, it seems.

  • Kinda funny that this is a question because when I mention I work in a hospital, most people assume I'm a nurse. And that kind of offends me.

  • Would you want to be a nurse instead of a laboratory professional?Nope. I couldn't handle 75% of the stuff nurses deal with on a daily basis.

  • NO! A THOUSAND TIMES NO!!! Been there, done that, have a master's in nursing to prove that!!! If I had listened to my heart, I would have been a laboratorian, NOT a nurse! If I couldn't be a laboratorian, I don't know what I'd do. I'd still want to be in the medical field, though...maybe do IS/IT for labs or something like that, or a biomedical technician.

  • I would love to see the lab portion in nursing school revamped with instructors who are knowledgeable about the lab brought in. There seems to be a great misunderstanding of the general nurse toward lab testing. They don't know how much education we have or even what happens behind our closed doors. I think a lot of the antagonism toward the lab can be helped with educating the average nurse on what we do and why it's important. There are of course wonderful nurses who do incredible work and are comfortable with us but I haven't found many that are understand our department.
If you're not a fan of ADVANCE for Medical Laboratory Professionals on Facebook, you're missing out on great daily conversation and dialogue. It has been enlightening to see the various responses like these. Add your commentary to the mix!

1 comments

My ex-husband is a nurse and still never understood what the lab does. There have been very few facilities that actively include the lab in the care of the patient. Some of that is lack of understanding from other departments. If I wasn't in the lab, I would probably go into something with computers. I thought about going into nursing when the economy tanked but couldn't do it. Instead, I am back in school taking classes in order to get a California license to keep working in this field.

Caroline, Lab - MLS July 3, 2011 10:09 AM

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