I am a medical technologist/microbiologist. You might want to try it for a
while before ruling out getting your certification. Depending on where you
work and the amount of supervision required, you probably will be limited on
the activities you can perform independently in the laboratory. Simply
setting up cultures will probably become boring after a while. Most of the
higher complexity testing, such as interpretation of cultures and
identification of etiological agents or the "fun stuff" requires that you
become a registered technologist due to CLIA guidelines, etc. Internship
programs vary -- in our area you could enter the MT program with the degree
you have and become eligible to sit for the registry in one year's time.
And the upside, you will then start out at about $10,000 more annual
income. Personally, I find it's a great job. You can do any number of
things (with the certification) -- hospital laboratories, industrial
laboratories, infection control, pharmaceutical companies, university
laboratories, manufacturing facilities, sales or customer support for large
instrument suppliers and scientific suppliers, and on and on....Anyway, good
luck with the job.
Fred & Rachel Brusseau wrote:
> I don't know if anyone remembers, but I posted here a couple months ago
> wondering about what kinds of jobs that people with a BA in General
> Biology can get. Well....I have my 2nd interview tomorrow for a
> microbiologist position at a local hospital (my friend who works there
> says they are going to hire me). My job would mainly be inoculating
> plates, and running some lab equipment ... but I'm still really excited.
> Does anyone think a job like this could lead anywhere? I think most of
> the other people who work in the department are MT's, and I'm not ready
> to commit to another 1 1/2 years of school to get that certification.
> The job pays about $22,000 a year. Anyone in a similar field have any
> feedback?
>> rachel brusseau
