Facebook Feedback: Specialties and Recommendations
If you're not following us on Facebook, you're missing a lot of fun feedback. If you are, keep following and spread the word! The conversations are far from over.
We asked Facebook fans: "Have you ever considered working in another specialty?"
Here are selected responses, copied verbatim without editing:
- I actually thought about specializing in Microbiology or Blood Bank.
- I would just be grateful getting hired. I am a licensed Certified Unemployed Phlebotomist!
- I've considered my career path every shift.....I'm sick of not being respected by doctors, nurses, and management. I'm sick of having my 25 years of experience being ignored whenever I (or one of my co-workers) make legitimate suggestions for quality/process improvement or cost savings.
- Yes, teaching elementary school so I can have summers off.
- I'm actually gonna be changing careers. I'm going back to school to become a registered dietician. The
only other career I'd be interested in would be singing/song writing but I just keep it as a hobby instead.
- I'm in the process of becoming a professional genealogist. Still have a ways to go but just completed a certificate course through Boston Univ......unfortunately, it's not likely to replace my present income.
- I already have another career as a welder. Nice change of pace when I need it.
We also asked Facebook fans: "Would you recommend the lab profession to your children?"
- Yes I already have but so far one is in the ARMY, one is in Resp. Therapy school (stepping stone to Phy. Asst. school), & son is 15 and wants to be a doctor or a landscape architect. Daughter in RT school considered doing MT school but the prerequisite Organic Chemistry made her change to RT.
- Not really. Not unless they plan to go as far as becoming a director or opening and owning their own lab. Otherwise there's not much to be done in this profession. That's just my opinion. No beef, no arguments.
- Yes
- MT school is a solid foundation for many careers...pathologist, perfusionist, forensics...but as far as recommending the lab as a stopping point...no, i wouldn't recommend it in our area (central Illinois).
- I will not.
- My daughter recommended it to me. We're both in school right now.
- Not unless we learn to take better care of our profession. We have no back up, no real recognition, and I for one am tired of people in other parts of the hospital being surprised that I actually had to go to school to learn how to do this (generally longer than they did).
- I wouldn't solely recommend the laboratory professional, but I would definitely want to introduce my future children to the joy and love I have for science. I wouldn't want to limit their potential by only suggestion professions I would choose myself... I want them to grow and understand what they love and to pursue their own interests.
- Yes I would. This feel has opened my eyes to other outlets in the medical field that that i never knew about. I feel that i love this field in medicine to continue to work in it and pursue my interest in it and recommend it to Others
- I would recommend this field as one of many options in the medical field. I didn't even know there was such an occupation until my microbiology professor gave us a flyer about Medical Technologist training program. It was perfect- working with my hands, problems solving, just enough patient contacts, finding things before doctors or anybody else does! If we don't talk about/ recommend our field, they won't know = less recognition and less respect. Break the cycle by talking about what we know best, then respect and recognition will follow.
- I think that, even if you recommend it or not, your children will have already made up their minds if you talk about your work experience at home. With both parents as MTs, I've known what's up in the hospital field as a whole since I was a kid- and I'm not impressed at all. I know I could do and enjoy the work, but the lab politics/poor treatment of lab professionals ranks medical lab occupations under other professions (like nuclear technician) for me. I diverted into plant pathology, and it looks like I can do the lab work that I like while not having to deal with some of the problems staff face in hospital setting.
- Absolutely. I love my job. I don't do it for recognition, I do it for my patients.
- No. Only a few fields which use a lab.. but not a general Lab professional.
- Yes, like others have said it's a good start. In the military there were a few more diversion so I wasn't completely stuck in the lab I like to get out and meeting people in the other hospital sections, so far I haven't seen that in the civilian side, but it's still early.