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Lab Technicians – Working Behind the ScenesAuthor: Brent McNutt
Each hospital or medical clinic with even the slightest degree of modernization has to have at least one clinical laboratory in it. These laboratories produce the raw data, which in turn is used by the doctors with the various patients that they handle.
And clinical lab technicians are the individuals responsible for keeping these laboratories up and running.
Doctors are the first to make an initial assessment of a patient’s diagnosis or treatment. But an initial assessment is never enough for a meticulous doctor: they verify these initial findings with lab technicians, who are usually hidden behind the scenes. They can usually be found operating the technical equipment necessary – working with electronics, chemicals, bacteria and other laboratory specific items to give an empirically-sound basis for either verifying or disproving a doctor’s initial assessment.
As such, a lab technician’s main duties can be loosely divided into three categories:
This is perhaps one of the most prized of the many merits of a lab technician. Their ability to manipulate equipment and laboratory equipment arms them with the necessary know-how to find microscopic or chemical tell-tale signs of a disease.
This ability to operate the machinery required to detect and verify the presence of certain diseases or illnesses serves as the backbone of a doctor’s diagnosis. The process of doing so is also often tedious, time-consuming and highly technical – things that a particularly busy doctor has little time or attention to deal with. By having competent lab technicians handling the equipment, a doctor’s time and efforts are channeled into their primary purposes: dealing with patients, analyzing the results, and coming up with proper treatment regimens.
The Laboratory Setting
The work environment of a lab technician is something of a health hazard – being exposed to chemicals, microscopic organisms, highly sensitive electronics and samples containing potentially infectious diseases are very real threats that could be very harmful (even fatal) to a technician who gets careless.
However, lab technicians are especially trained to deal with these situations. Safety is part of a technician’s list of competencies; allowing him or her to operate in such an environment without posing a threat to himself or to other technicians in the same laboratory.
Technologist vs. Technician
A distinction must be made between a technologist and a technician: the former is the more skilled, better accredited of the two, while the latter performs relatively less complex tasks than their superior counterparts.
This does not change the fact that technicians are necessary in a laboratory too. While technologists can be considered as seniors in the laboratory, they are few in number and rather difficult to train. Technicians fill the gap in manpower – not quite as skilled in laboratory operations as technologists, but competent enough to accomplish the simpler tasks that require less complex skills.
So there you have it: a quick rundown of a lab technician’s responsibilities in the hospital. Just keep these tidbits in mind the next time you see a closed lab door in your local hospital or clinic – you can be sure that a lab technician or two is busy working his or her medical magic in there.
About the Author:
Brent McNutt enjoys talking about landau scrub top and landau scrubs men and networking with healthcare professionals online.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/career-management-articles/lab-technicians-working-behind-the-scenes-919742.html