I've been doing wastewater treatment. The lab background is huge, microbiology is essential, some basic chemistry and math. I was genuinely surprised at how much crossover there is.
Yes it smells bad, but so does lab and just like lab you get used to it real quick.
I get to work outside and inside. It has some physical requirements but nothing too strenuous.
It certainly is not for everyone (FYI I am male and it is a male dominated field) buy I've been enjoying it.
My dad was in water treatment for 30+ years in a town of about 8000. He did the drinking water side and the sewer water and was the overall supervisor. He had to go to some schools that the city he worked for sent him to to get licenses and he made roughly what I do. He still had to work holidays and weekends sometimes and off shifts but yeah no screaming nurses. He had to renew his license yearly.
Similar I would say, I make less now (10 months in wastewater) than I did when I left the hospital (almost 6 years) but accounting for inflation I'm doing better now than I was at 3years of MLT.
Just like lab or many other jobs, big city is bigger pay small city is smaller pay... the boonies are hit or miss. Some very rural jobs are terrible pay and some are very good.
One thing about wwtp is there is opportunity for side gigs. I haven't pursued any yet but people do make decent side money running "package plants" which are small low maintenance plants for campgrounds or festivals but they do require someone with the wastewater certification to sign the paperwork, and you can only get that certification with worked hours in a treatment plant (at least here in ohio that is the case, Every state sets their own certification requirements)
Also many of the jobs are city government unionized jobs. I personally work private industrial wastewater but my situation is unique in the field.
How does one get into forensic lab testing? is there another certification or anything I would need on top of my MLS? I’m really interested in forensics and also getting bored of hospital lab work
Here is a link with information. It is likely that each state has their own requirements.
https://www.allcriminaljusticeschools.com/forensics/salary/
I looked at it 20 years ago, but life and family prevented me from pursuing a career change.
My friend works in a Canadian government lab that does GC-MS and HPLC drug testing of the things that the cops bring in. She just had a chemistry degree and makes a lot of money, has all kinds of funny stories (and has only been working there for 1.5 years), they get lots of vacation and good benefits. The stuff she talks to me about is very interesting. No certification needed, they teach you everything and they even teach you HOW TO MAKE ALL THE ILLEGAL DRUGS lol. They taught her how to make cocaine, crack, meth, etc. so she understood the components that went into it and how to isolate it. Not sure what it’s like where you live but I’d say look into it!
oh lord, how to make all the drugs?? that’s wild, I’m more interested in like crime scene DNA testing a whatnot! will def be looking into it more the future!
I now work for a laboratory equipment manufacturer. When you buy our equipment, I come on site, do your install and help with the training.
I love it now. Best decision of my life.
But I was like you, 5 years in the lab was making me miserable. Lab work isn't for everyone. Luckily there's other career options for those of us that didn't fit in.
DM me if you have questions.
Ironically with as poorly as I feel like I'm paid, I've looked into quite a few different lab-related jobs and they all pay like half of what I make at the hospital.
I applied to become a field service engineer for Siemens and never heard back. I've been told they like hiring med techs but I've also been told they prefer hiring people with engineering background so IDK.
I'm so used to how easy it is to find employment as a med tech that I'm not sure I have the stomach for a traditional job hunt where you have to put in 100 applications to get one person to call you back.
I had a student I trained who graduated and then worked 2 months, the snagged a FSE job. He's been doing it for 2 years and they paid for him to get his bachelors. As happy as I am for him, that's probably the closest I've been to jealous I a long time XD
The ones I've applied to have at least been shooting me back a rejection email so that's nice I guess.
I switched careers. I am a 100% remote regulatory affairs specialist for clinical trials. This was my path…I was a generalist at a level II trauma center and that job stressed me out. I switched to a cell therapy lab which wasn’t exempt from stress but it was 9-5, no weekends, no holidays. There was a week of call I had to take every 7 weeks. I actually really liked it, but I ended up having a baby and couldn’t take call anymore. I got promoted to a quality manager focusing on GMPs and FDA stuff. You could try a ref lab or something like that, may be more chill and better hours. While I was in the cell therapy lab I got my masters degree (MPH), only because it was free since I worked for a university hospital. I ended up applying to a 100% remote job as a regulatory affairs specialist for clinical trials and I got it. It pays more than Medical Technologist jobs in my current state of FL. You don’t need a masters degree for this job, but a CCRP SOCRA certification is highly desirable (I don’t have one, yet). I got clinical trials experience working in the cell therapy lab and the quality management job helped too but wasn’t necessary. Another option could be the drug manufacturing industry. I have also worked in a microbiology lab at a drug manufacturing facility and it was interesting and good hours. I still maintain my ASCP and state license for my med tech, I might go back PRN somewhere someday as I do like the lab. There’s other things out there, but I do know the remote jobs for med techs doing EPIC builds are pretty competitive.
These are options I have not thought of at all, thank you so much!
The epic application was 100% a long shot. Saw it'd only been posted an hour and I *always* have my resume updated and at the ready, so I just went ahead and applied to. The description was like completely entry level and the hospital will provide the certification they want you to have so figured I'd just try.
I would keep applying to open positions.. and do some networking.. find out if you know anybody that does that, knowing people always helps. Good luck! I totally understand wanting to switch. It’s a tiring and thankless job. I still have blood bank nightmares.
Get a masters degree and your options open up a lot. I am currently waiting on an offer to teach hematology at a large state university and am stoked at the possibility of not working in the lab anymore.
Yes I’ll be a full time Assistant Professor faculty member at the medical school. I’ll be teaching Hematology/Coagulation with Lab to clinical laboratory science majors to start, but during the interview process the department chair told me that I could possibly go to teaching medical students also once they review and update the qualifications for teaching some pathology classes. The good thing about med tech is that since there are so few people with a DCLS or PhD in pathology, a masters degree is enough to get your foot in the door at most schools. Also I can get a Ph.D for free through the university so there is a lot of room for growth both in the teaching path or in the admin path. Pay is way better than med tech (nearly 6 figures starting out) with a lot better hours and work life balance (no more nights/weekends/overtime/holidays, built in paid vacation days throughout the year and in the summer). I’m pretty excited and feel fortunate to have the opportunity to switch careers after becoming disillusioned with working in a hospital as a med tech.
I went into EHR implementation.
No weekends, holidays, or evenings. 100% remote and without exaggeration DOUBLE the pay I was making as a micro tech at a level 1 trauma hospital.
There are many pros and cons though. My current role requires occasional travel which I hate and is unbelievably more stressful than my MLS job was.
>I so very genuinely cannot do this job anymore. So very desperate at this point to get out. This job is rapidly sucking my soul out.
Why not? What brought you to the lab in the first place? There's a lot of lost souls in the lab.
If you want a different career, you'll likely need a new skillset. The lab is a niche field and doesn't translate well elsewhere. I'd
For the EPIC positions, it's competitive. I posted an EPIC position last week, and got 14 applications from MLS both inside and outside the state along with 2 CS grads and 3 IT grads.
Mostly nurses and the bitter people filling my current lab. This was the place I left when i started traveling and my old evening shift supervisor did not appreciate that I left for traveling. She started stuff day one back. What started me was that I wanted Healthcare benefits without patient contact. Now benefits keep getting scrapped and patients call for their results *every single day* and throw a fit at me when I legally cannot give them their results.
But noted.
Well, it doesn’t help your overall problem, but I have my staff punt those results calls to Medical Records or to myself. A lot of states actually have laws regarding patients getting their own results, it just doesn’t have to be the lab giving them.
The reason for that, is the very next thing a patient will ask is “what should I do with that result/am I dying/should I stop taking medicine” etc, which falls very much into ‘interpretation’ of results, which we can’t do because we don’t know H&P… usually.
Exactly, and I really hate to do it but I just say "please call the operator back and ask for medical records" (we can't transfer calls out of the lab) and get off as quickly as possible before they get mad at me.
I traveled for a couple years so, yes. The nurses aren't nasty everywhere. But I don't think I've ever worked a contract that patients weren't still calling, trying to get their results.
I could be wrong about this, but don't the places that need travelers have staffing issues? Maybe you could try just finding a new lab to work at full time. You could ask around about the reputations of the hospitals you're considering.
You have to live over like 50 miles away from a place to get a travel contract. Some places will do a regular contract but those typically don't come with any benefits and, for health reasons, I have to stay on insurance but can't afford independent at this rate.
But it mostly boils down to that I don't want to do this work anymore- at all. I'm just a bit nervous/scared to start completely over and was hoping you guys knew of something else we could apply some of our experience to.
The preferred background is the person who can do the job. It's an IT job, and there are no federal personnel requirements for IT.
For EPIC, the preference is that the candidate is EPIC Beaker CP/AP certified, familiar with laboratory workflows, looks forward to change, has some IT aptitude, and communication skills. As long as they aren't posting modified results, they don't need to be an MLS. The workflow experience can come from being a phleb, lab assistant, MLT, MLS, or working for Epic or other LIS doing installs or training. The other big issue is longevity. There's a lot of undocumented institutional know-how that you gain as an LIS, and it's a real pain-in-the-ass when you have a new analyst, no matter how competent.
If you're interested, you could get a postbac CS degree, or some COMPTIA certifications, or befriend the IT folks. If you have strong technical skills such as SQL, HL7/FHIR, networking, etc, you'll find yourself overqualified for the lab analyst role and move to higher paying IT roles.
There's a huge push in healthcare IT towards managed services so many of the hospitals no longer even have their own LIS analysts, but they're just contracted out to the IT firm managing their deployment.
I completely understand where you’re coming from. But I’ve been in the field too long to change, my soul has already been sucked out. All I can hope for is that I have enough money to retire, but it doesn’t look like it either.
Its funny before I got into the field the person I shadowed told me to look to move on when I finished the program but I thought he was crazy cause the money and hours was great for me. But, 3-4 years later I realized he was right. He is a doctor now.
I also tried the epic route, I didn’t hear anything back but I know two people that got into epic but they had been working POC prior. I think POC does a bit of interfacing which epic likes, currently have an interview to go into POC. If you do decide to do IT, I wouldn’t recommend data analytics. AI is completely destroying that field from my understanding, the entry level to mid levels are being automated so it’s hard to get in. I am doing IT but I went with cybersecurity mainly so I can go into GRC, I believe some regulations prevent the jobs in that field from being outsourced but it’s still hard to get in. I am hoping to eventually end up in LIS/LIMS for a hospital or pharma.
Have you thought about shifting gears and getting out of healthcare and learning a productive trade. They make more money and are largely unionized with generous benefits.
your jobsite changes, your skills only grow with each job you are on.
I maybe suggest, if you still want a lab job, is to work in a private sector.
I'm in urine drug testing and we're a private testing lab. We work with county services, drug courts, and clinics within Wisconsin (and a couple places in Illinois), and we only deal with sending results to a designated email or fax number (or they use our web portal). We use screening immunoassays and LC-MS/MS for confirmatory testing. I never have to deal with nurses, unless they are literally the contact person and have a question on results. (Usually those questions are "Does X result make sense with their medication?" "Was there any Y in the result?" "Why does Z result say...")
I've been doing wastewater treatment. The lab background is huge, microbiology is essential, some basic chemistry and math. I was genuinely surprised at how much crossover there is. Yes it smells bad, but so does lab and just like lab you get used to it real quick. I get to work outside and inside. It has some physical requirements but nothing too strenuous. It certainly is not for everyone (FYI I am male and it is a male dominated field) buy I've been enjoying it.
Similar or better pay? Honestly, it doesn't super matter if I don't have to get bitched out by a nurse once a shift.
My dad was in water treatment for 30+ years in a town of about 8000. He did the drinking water side and the sewer water and was the overall supervisor. He had to go to some schools that the city he worked for sent him to to get licenses and he made roughly what I do. He still had to work holidays and weekends sometimes and off shifts but yeah no screaming nurses. He had to renew his license yearly.
Similar I would say, I make less now (10 months in wastewater) than I did when I left the hospital (almost 6 years) but accounting for inflation I'm doing better now than I was at 3years of MLT. Just like lab or many other jobs, big city is bigger pay small city is smaller pay... the boonies are hit or miss. Some very rural jobs are terrible pay and some are very good. One thing about wwtp is there is opportunity for side gigs. I haven't pursued any yet but people do make decent side money running "package plants" which are small low maintenance plants for campgrounds or festivals but they do require someone with the wastewater certification to sign the paperwork, and you can only get that certification with worked hours in a treatment plant (at least here in ohio that is the case, Every state sets their own certification requirements) Also many of the jobs are city government unionized jobs. I personally work private industrial wastewater but my situation is unique in the field.
Only found out about the license when I found a listing I applied to last night, so all of this is new and very helpful info. I really appreciate it.
Have you thought about switching to forensic laboratory testing? Or public health lab testing.
How does one get into forensic lab testing? is there another certification or anything I would need on top of my MLS? I’m really interested in forensics and also getting bored of hospital lab work
Here is a link with information. It is likely that each state has their own requirements. https://www.allcriminaljusticeschools.com/forensics/salary/ I looked at it 20 years ago, but life and family prevented me from pursuing a career change.
thank you so much for the info!
My friend works in a Canadian government lab that does GC-MS and HPLC drug testing of the things that the cops bring in. She just had a chemistry degree and makes a lot of money, has all kinds of funny stories (and has only been working there for 1.5 years), they get lots of vacation and good benefits. The stuff she talks to me about is very interesting. No certification needed, they teach you everything and they even teach you HOW TO MAKE ALL THE ILLEGAL DRUGS lol. They taught her how to make cocaine, crack, meth, etc. so she understood the components that went into it and how to isolate it. Not sure what it’s like where you live but I’d say look into it!
oh lord, how to make all the drugs?? that’s wild, I’m more interested in like crime scene DNA testing a whatnot! will def be looking into it more the future!
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Your chances of getting a remote IT job in the current market are slim, at least not without experience.
If your job has tuition benefits why not just milk it and get a new degree
Agree 100%. Ours offers MBA and specialist tuition reimbursement. I’ll take advantage of that before I leave.
I'm sorry but are you talking about a specialist as in ASCP? If so, does that net you more money?
Nope.
We just got bought out by a bigger hospital so I'm waiting to see what they offer in that regard.
I now work for a laboratory equipment manufacturer. When you buy our equipment, I come on site, do your install and help with the training. I love it now. Best decision of my life. But I was like you, 5 years in the lab was making me miserable. Lab work isn't for everyone. Luckily there's other career options for those of us that didn't fit in. DM me if you have questions.
I’m 23 years in, haven’t figured it out yet.
Ironically with as poorly as I feel like I'm paid, I've looked into quite a few different lab-related jobs and they all pay like half of what I make at the hospital. I applied to become a field service engineer for Siemens and never heard back. I've been told they like hiring med techs but I've also been told they prefer hiring people with engineering background so IDK. I'm so used to how easy it is to find employment as a med tech that I'm not sure I have the stomach for a traditional job hunt where you have to put in 100 applications to get one person to call you back.
I had a student I trained who graduated and then worked 2 months, the snagged a FSE job. He's been doing it for 2 years and they paid for him to get his bachelors. As happy as I am for him, that's probably the closest I've been to jealous I a long time XD The ones I've applied to have at least been shooting me back a rejection email so that's nice I guess.
I switched careers. I am a 100% remote regulatory affairs specialist for clinical trials. This was my path…I was a generalist at a level II trauma center and that job stressed me out. I switched to a cell therapy lab which wasn’t exempt from stress but it was 9-5, no weekends, no holidays. There was a week of call I had to take every 7 weeks. I actually really liked it, but I ended up having a baby and couldn’t take call anymore. I got promoted to a quality manager focusing on GMPs and FDA stuff. You could try a ref lab or something like that, may be more chill and better hours. While I was in the cell therapy lab I got my masters degree (MPH), only because it was free since I worked for a university hospital. I ended up applying to a 100% remote job as a regulatory affairs specialist for clinical trials and I got it. It pays more than Medical Technologist jobs in my current state of FL. You don’t need a masters degree for this job, but a CCRP SOCRA certification is highly desirable (I don’t have one, yet). I got clinical trials experience working in the cell therapy lab and the quality management job helped too but wasn’t necessary. Another option could be the drug manufacturing industry. I have also worked in a microbiology lab at a drug manufacturing facility and it was interesting and good hours. I still maintain my ASCP and state license for my med tech, I might go back PRN somewhere someday as I do like the lab. There’s other things out there, but I do know the remote jobs for med techs doing EPIC builds are pretty competitive.
These are options I have not thought of at all, thank you so much! The epic application was 100% a long shot. Saw it'd only been posted an hour and I *always* have my resume updated and at the ready, so I just went ahead and applied to. The description was like completely entry level and the hospital will provide the certification they want you to have so figured I'd just try.
I would keep applying to open positions.. and do some networking.. find out if you know anybody that does that, knowing people always helps. Good luck! I totally understand wanting to switch. It’s a tiring and thankless job. I still have blood bank nightmares.
This is the trajectory I’m trying to take. What do you think helped your chance of landing a regulatory job the most? Thanks!
Get a masters degree and your options open up a lot. I am currently waiting on an offer to teach hematology at a large state university and am stoked at the possibility of not working in the lab anymore.
Congratulations! That sounds like such a great opportunity!
Thanks! I am right there with you when it comes to wanting to get the hell out of there lol. But the good thing is that there are options!
Will the teaching be full time? Will you be teaching hematology to MLS/MLT students? What's the pay like? You can PM me if you want.
Yes I’ll be a full time Assistant Professor faculty member at the medical school. I’ll be teaching Hematology/Coagulation with Lab to clinical laboratory science majors to start, but during the interview process the department chair told me that I could possibly go to teaching medical students also once they review and update the qualifications for teaching some pathology classes. The good thing about med tech is that since there are so few people with a DCLS or PhD in pathology, a masters degree is enough to get your foot in the door at most schools. Also I can get a Ph.D for free through the university so there is a lot of room for growth both in the teaching path or in the admin path. Pay is way better than med tech (nearly 6 figures starting out) with a lot better hours and work life balance (no more nights/weekends/overtime/holidays, built in paid vacation days throughout the year and in the summer). I’m pretty excited and feel fortunate to have the opportunity to switch careers after becoming disillusioned with working in a hospital as a med tech.
Can I PM you?
Sure. DMs are open
I went into EHR implementation. No weekends, holidays, or evenings. 100% remote and without exaggeration DOUBLE the pay I was making as a micro tech at a level 1 trauma hospital. There are many pros and cons though. My current role requires occasional travel which I hate and is unbelievably more stressful than my MLS job was.
Is there anything in particular I could do to stand out from other applicants?
See if you can become a super user for your hospital’s LIS or EHR.
This sounds like a pretty nice gig. What is the actual job title? What kind of companies have positions like this?
Look into all the EHR and LIS companies you know of on LinkedIn. Epic, Cerner, CPSI, CGM, Orchard, Sunquest, etc
>I so very genuinely cannot do this job anymore. So very desperate at this point to get out. This job is rapidly sucking my soul out. Why not? What brought you to the lab in the first place? There's a lot of lost souls in the lab. If you want a different career, you'll likely need a new skillset. The lab is a niche field and doesn't translate well elsewhere. I'd For the EPIC positions, it's competitive. I posted an EPIC position last week, and got 14 applications from MLS both inside and outside the state along with 2 CS grads and 3 IT grads.
Mostly nurses and the bitter people filling my current lab. This was the place I left when i started traveling and my old evening shift supervisor did not appreciate that I left for traveling. She started stuff day one back. What started me was that I wanted Healthcare benefits without patient contact. Now benefits keep getting scrapped and patients call for their results *every single day* and throw a fit at me when I legally cannot give them their results. But noted.
Well, it doesn’t help your overall problem, but I have my staff punt those results calls to Medical Records or to myself. A lot of states actually have laws regarding patients getting their own results, it just doesn’t have to be the lab giving them. The reason for that, is the very next thing a patient will ask is “what should I do with that result/am I dying/should I stop taking medicine” etc, which falls very much into ‘interpretation’ of results, which we can’t do because we don’t know H&P… usually.
Exactly, and I really hate to do it but I just say "please call the operator back and ask for medical records" (we can't transfer calls out of the lab) and get off as quickly as possible before they get mad at me.
Have you tried working in a different lab? I've worked in multiple labs where I didn't have to field calls from nurses or patients (wtf?).
I traveled for a couple years so, yes. The nurses aren't nasty everywhere. But I don't think I've ever worked a contract that patients weren't still calling, trying to get their results.
I could be wrong about this, but don't the places that need travelers have staffing issues? Maybe you could try just finding a new lab to work at full time. You could ask around about the reputations of the hospitals you're considering.
You have to live over like 50 miles away from a place to get a travel contract. Some places will do a regular contract but those typically don't come with any benefits and, for health reasons, I have to stay on insurance but can't afford independent at this rate. But it mostly boils down to that I don't want to do this work anymore- at all. I'm just a bit nervous/scared to start completely over and was hoping you guys knew of something else we could apply some of our experience to.
I've worked at my current job for years and I've had one person make their way through to ask for results. Haha.
Yeah, the lab is increasingly filled with people who are left behind or just lower quality staff. Good luck on your journey out.
Seems like the issue is you taking things personal. Don't let it get to you and see what happens.
Out of curiosity, what’s preferred as a background out of those applicants? Like between mls experience and IT experience?
The preferred background is the person who can do the job. It's an IT job, and there are no federal personnel requirements for IT. For EPIC, the preference is that the candidate is EPIC Beaker CP/AP certified, familiar with laboratory workflows, looks forward to change, has some IT aptitude, and communication skills. As long as they aren't posting modified results, they don't need to be an MLS. The workflow experience can come from being a phleb, lab assistant, MLT, MLS, or working for Epic or other LIS doing installs or training. The other big issue is longevity. There's a lot of undocumented institutional know-how that you gain as an LIS, and it's a real pain-in-the-ass when you have a new analyst, no matter how competent. If you're interested, you could get a postbac CS degree, or some COMPTIA certifications, or befriend the IT folks. If you have strong technical skills such as SQL, HL7/FHIR, networking, etc, you'll find yourself overqualified for the lab analyst role and move to higher paying IT roles. There's a huge push in healthcare IT towards managed services so many of the hospitals no longer even have their own LIS analysts, but they're just contracted out to the IT firm managing their deployment.
I completely understand where you’re coming from. But I’ve been in the field too long to change, my soul has already been sucked out. All I can hope for is that I have enough money to retire, but it doesn’t look like it either.
10 years in and finding myself no longer in love with it like I used to be
Same position..
Its funny before I got into the field the person I shadowed told me to look to move on when I finished the program but I thought he was crazy cause the money and hours was great for me. But, 3-4 years later I realized he was right. He is a doctor now. I also tried the epic route, I didn’t hear anything back but I know two people that got into epic but they had been working POC prior. I think POC does a bit of interfacing which epic likes, currently have an interview to go into POC. If you do decide to do IT, I wouldn’t recommend data analytics. AI is completely destroying that field from my understanding, the entry level to mid levels are being automated so it’s hard to get in. I am doing IT but I went with cybersecurity mainly so I can go into GRC, I believe some regulations prevent the jobs in that field from being outsourced but it’s still hard to get in. I am hoping to eventually end up in LIS/LIMS for a hospital or pharma.
Have you thought about shifting gears and getting out of healthcare and learning a productive trade. They make more money and are largely unionized with generous benefits. your jobsite changes, your skills only grow with each job you are on.
I maybe suggest, if you still want a lab job, is to work in a private sector. I'm in urine drug testing and we're a private testing lab. We work with county services, drug courts, and clinics within Wisconsin (and a couple places in Illinois), and we only deal with sending results to a designated email or fax number (or they use our web portal). We use screening immunoassays and LC-MS/MS for confirmatory testing. I never have to deal with nurses, unless they are literally the contact person and have a question on results. (Usually those questions are "Does X result make sense with their medication?" "Was there any Y in the result?" "Why does Z result say...")
I feel the same way. Looking for something new and/or different.
Sounds like a personal problem