A Day in the Life of a Medical Laboratory Scientist

Hi, my name is Matthew Burroughs and I am a medical laboratory scientist at the University of Virginia Blood Bank. My responsibility is to care for patients by analyzing their blood samples and specifically matching them up appropriately for transfusion. The blood bank is a great place to work especially in a hospital setting because each day presents a unique opportunity and new challenges to overcome. Hi, I'm Akecia Baker and I'm a laboratory scientist in the toxicology lab at University of Virginia. We mainly do drug testing. We also test certain drugs to make sure that they are within a good clinical range, that they're not too high where they'd be toxic to the body or too low to where they're not efficient enough. My path would probably be considered unconventional by most. I knew that I wanted to do something relating to medicine and it took me a little while to get here. I was working locally in the emergency department as a medical scribe and I became particularly interested in the way that the laboratory supported patients that were in the ED. So that's how I really became exposed to the profession. I've been interested in science probably since the third grade. The science fairs were always really cool to me. I was interested in medical school so you know there's a lot of science courses I had to take and I had the thought that oh this would be a cool job to just work in the lab. At the time I didn't even know that it was an entire career field. The graduate program that I attended was at Virginia Commonwealth University. I enrolled in a categorical track which allowed me to obtain my master's degree in medical laboratory sciences but to receive a concentration in immunohematology where my passion lied. I'm very fortunate to be here at UVA. I was lucky enough to receive a work grant scholarship for the profession. I love what I'm doing right now. I think it's the best of both worlds in terms of both the patient care element as well as the scientific investigation. I chose toxicology because it's a more specialized lab discipline. I love my job. I love science. I love to learn. I like to teach and the great thing about our job is because there's so many different disciplines. If for some reason you get bored you can just go to a different lab and learn a new skill set. My goal is to just learn as much as I can, get a better foundation and feel comfortable being in the field and doing things by myself. I think one of the greatest strengths of working in laboratory medicine is you really do have many different opportunities so you can kind of tailor your career to your own interests and skill set. My passion predominantly lies in education and training and so I love having the opportunity on a daily basis to not only teach other people but learn new things myself. I would tell anyone that's in school and interested in science it's a great field. It's a needed field and one of the greatest things that when you graduate you will have a job. No matter what state you go to you'll have a job and whether you want to go get your PhD in science or medical school it's just a good foundation. I do think that I made the right decision choosing this career and I think that there are many possibilities for my future. There are just so many different avenues for laboratory professionals that the sky is really the limit.