Pursuing employment in the health workforce is always a great idea! The amalgamation of hard work, dedication, passion, and a commitment to helping people has certainly shaped and connected healthcare workers across the United States. Medical and clinical laboratory technicians and technologists fall into this field of work and prove to be very important. Generally laboratory technicians require 2 to 4 years of higher education, technologists require even further schooling. Lab technicians aid in finding out if patients have a disease and, if so, what disease or diseases may be present. To be more specific, they implement laboratory tools and do procedural work on patients to try to collect data on the body and locate or identify the crux of the health issue. This mainly involves the analyses of various bodily fluids. It includes drawing and examining blood and other bodily fluids, as well as analyzing the efficacy of various drugs. It should be noted that this is a very small list of responsibilities lab technicians do. Lab technologists are very similar to lab technicians, but because they have further education their work is much more involved and focused.

Medical laboratory work is currently a growing field of employment in considerably high demand across the United States. According to the Occupational Employment Statistics, as of May 2017, medical and clinical laboratory technologists and technicians hold approximately 332,380 jobs across the United States. While about 49 percent of employers in this field are general medical and surgical hospitals at the state, local, and private levels, there are a variety of employers ranging from universities to physicians’ offices. New York State alone as of May 2017 has 18,180 clinical laboratory technologists and technicians in employment. This makes it the third highest state in clinical laboratory employment in the U.S., behind only California with 29,690 and Texas with 26,700.

Jobs in this field are also well paid. The annual mean wage for clinical laboratory technologists and technicians in New York averages at $61,090. This puts New York in the top ten highest annual mean wage for this field with the highest state being Rhode Island at an annual mean wage of $68,290. If you are interested in learning more about wage data in this field, click the link here and it will take you to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website.

If medical laboratory work is something you are interested in or are already pursuing then an invaluable opportunity has just knocked on your door! CNYAHEC has teamed up with Bassett Healthcare Network to provide a MedLab job shadowing program available to high school and college students. Students can shadow medical laboratory professionals for as many as 15 hours in various locations across central New York. To learn more or apply for the program you can click here.

Interested in Medical Laboratory Technology or other careers in health care?? Click here to experience our health career exploration portal, HWcareers!