Medical Assistant Jobs

Medical Technologist Jobs Offer Great Opportunities

A medical technologist is a professional whose work is to perform diagnosis analysis tests on various fluids of the human body. The fluids with which the medical technologist interacts includes blood, urine, sputum, stool, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), peritoneal fluid, pericardial fluid, synovial fluid and various other fluids. Medical Technologists find themselves welcomed in various health care institutions like hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices, clinical laboratories, reference labs and various research faculties in the biotechnology field. Medical technologist jobs are research oriented and for a graduate aiming to pursue further study in his field, this is an excellent career option to get him started.

The educational requirement for a medical technologist involves four to five years of intensive training. It is generally a three year classroom based course followed by a clinic based course for one year. It is called a 3+1 course. Courses may also be 2+2 courses or 4+1 course. In the classroom, the student gains a thorough knowledge of the various diagnostic patterns and procedures, with a complete understanding of the body fluids and their functions. After the three year course, the student is allowed to work in a clinic, in order to gain first hand experience. However, this is done under the supervision of a superior doctor or physician, to avoid mistakes or amateur errors. Here, the student performs diagnostic testing in a laboratory. The general work period is for about 40 hours a week continuing for 20 to 26 weeks during which the student gets trained as almost a medical professional. At the end of the course, the student earns a bachelor degree with his specialty being a medical technologist.

The job opportunities for a medical technologist are numerous. The job of a medical technologist involves a variety of duties. The primary work of a medical technologist is to analyze body fluids by performing a series of tests on them. These may involve analytic techniques like manual white blood cell differentials, bone marrow counts, and microscopic analysis. Also, the medical technologist must maintain the equipment used to analyze critical patient information. He must perform calibration, quality control and other related operations on these equipments. The medical technologist may sometime have to perform troubleshooting on the equipment if some internal problem occurs in the equipment. But this duty is only an auxiliary function of the medical technologist. His main duty still remains that of body fluid analysis. He must thoroughly analyze the collected body fluids and must be able to distinguish between contaminated or improperly collected samples. He must then reject the contaminated sample and request for a new sample. He must be able to identify any discrepancies that might affect the testing process. Some of the common tests performed by medical technologists include complete blood count (CBC), complete metabolic panel (CMP), electrolyte panel, liver function test (LFT), urinalysis, prothrombin time(PT/INR) and activated partial thromboplastin time (PTT or APTT). These are some of the important duties of a medical technologist.

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