Photo: Wayne May, left, and other students in the Wallace State Clinical Laboratory Technician program watch as fellow student Gregory Vance competes in a pipetting contest during Medical Laboratory Professionals Week.
HANCEVILLE – Students in Wallace State Community College’s Clinical Laboratory Technician program recently celebrated Medical Laboratory Professionals Week. As part of the celebration, the students competed to see who had the steadiest hand and best eye for accuracy, who could best spell the medical terms associated with their field and if they could recognize an object from the lab from close-up photos that only showed a portion of the object.
Medical laboratory technicians could be described as the detectives of the medical field, as they work to find out what is behind a patient’s condition based on the tests they run in the lab. They play a crucial role in the detection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
Through 2024, employment of medical laboratory technicians is expected to grow by 18 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, much faster than the average for all occupations. Nationwide, the median annual salary of medical and laboratory technicians in 2015 was $38,970.
Wallace State’s Clinical Laboratory Technician program is a five-semester program. It is one of several health course included in the Fast Track for Industry program, making it eligible for Career Tech Dual Enrollment scholarships.
Gregory Vance of Cullman is a sophomore in the program. “It’s been awesome,” he said. “I love the program. Yeah, it’s hard and there’s lots to do, but it’s interesting.”
Fellow student Wayne May agrees. May, of Jasper entered Wallace State’s CLT program after working for 23 years in the research field. “Because of changes in the research field, I found myself laid off,” said May. “I knew without a college degree it was going to be very hard to find a job in my field locally, and I didn’t want to move. So I thought I’d come back to school and learn a new trade in the healthcare field, and hopefully get me through retirement.”
“I’ve enjoyed it,” said May, who’s in his second semester. “It’s been a lot of hard work, especially this semester, but that’s to be expected. Nothing good ever comes easy.”
During this week’s celebrations, students in the WSCC program held a pipetting contest. Two teams competed against each other to see who could be the quickest and the most accurate in drawing liquid into long narrow vials call pipettes, without sucking any of the liquid into the bulb used to draw up the liquid. Other events included a spelling bee featuring medical terminology commonly used in labs and an identification game using close-up photos of parts of lab equipment.
The Wallace State CLT program is accepting applications for the Fall 2016 semester through June 1. For more information about the CLT program, contact program chair Melanie Bradford at 256-352-8347 or melanie.bradford@wallacestate.edu or visit http://www.wallacestate.edu.
