Clinical Laboratory Technician

Career Area: Health Care including Nursing

Occupation Group: Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Clinical Laboratory Technician earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $37,122

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $38,786

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

In a clinical laboratory setting, helps with the performance of laboratory tests in toxicology, chemistry, hematology, immunology, and microbiology laboratories, which provide information for medical patient diagnosis and treatment. Sets up, operates, and maintains laboratory equipment, makes observations, and calculates and records results; receives, types, tests, and records blood bank inventories.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Clinical Laboratory Technician is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Computer Literacy: The ability to use computers and related technology efficiently for work tasks.
• Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting or dpanneuring is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
• Organizational Skills: Experience with a systematic process of structuring, integrating, co-ordinating task goals, and activities to resources in order to attain objectives.
• English: English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now a global lingua franca.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Phlebotomy: Phlebotomy is the process of making an incision in a vein with a needle.
• Patient Care: The services rendered by members of the health profession and non-professionals under their supervision for the benefit of the patient.
• Quality Assurance and Control: Working experience with processes used to measure and assure the quality of a product and ensuring products and services meet consumer expectations.
• Specimen Collection: As a scientific collection is referred to any systematic collection of objects for the study of nature or of the human history as well as the institutions, organizations or sub-organizations that build such collections preserve, develop systematically and make accessible and useful.
• Data Entry: Working experience of Data Entry. Data entry is the professional term for entering information into a computer or data-recording system using an electronic or mechanical device.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Clinical Laboratory Technician that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Patient Transportation and Transfer: to convey the responsibility for the care of a patient from one entity to another. It may involve the discharge fromone entity and the admission to another along with the patient's medical/dental records or copies.
• Point-of-Care Testing: Working experience of Point-of-Care Testing, which is defined as medical diagnostic testing at or near the point of care that is, at the time and place of patient care. This contrasts with the historical pattern in which testing was wholly or mostly confined to the medical laboratory, which entailed sending off specimens away from the point of care and then waiting hours or days to learn the results, during which time care must continue without the desired information.
• Clinical Pathology: Working experience of Clinical Pathology, which is a medical specialty that is concerned with the diagnosis of disease based on the laboratory analysis of bodily fluids, such as blood, urine, and tissue homogenates or extracts using the tools of chemistry, microbiology, hematology and molecular pathology.
• Specimen Preparation: Specimen preparation is important in any microscopical technique with proper preparation methods facilitating examination and interpretation of microstructural features.
• Blood Draws: A blood draw (sometimes called a blood test) is a way to collect blood so that lab testing can be done to check a childs health.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Clinical Laboratory Assistant
• Clinical Laboratory Technician
• Clinical Technician
• Health Technician Telehealth Clinical
• Clinical Laboratory Assistant I

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Medical Technologist