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Students Celebrate National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week

Clinical Laboratory Science (CLS) students at Neumann will celebrate National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week (April 22-28) on Thursday, April 26, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Bachmann Main Building, room 348. The event will be a mixture of entertainment and education, with laboratory games, refreshments and information concerning the job market, the profession, and alternative employment opportunities in sales and other areas.

Interest in the CLS program has increased significantly in the last year at Neumann. Of the 40 freshman students in biology, ten have expressed interest in pursuing the CLS biology track.

Clinical laboratory professional are key members of today’s health care team. Every day, nurses, physicians, and other medical workers rely on laboratory professionals to perform tests on body fluids, interpret the results, and help provide answers for a complete picture of a patient’s health. Laboratory professionals work in a variety of settings, from hospitals and doctors’ offices to research laboratories and public health laboratories.

CLS professionals work primarily in the clinical laboratory but also in consulting, marketing, research and product development, laboratory information systems, management, education, public heath and infection control, sales, technical support, quality assurance, and forensic biological science.

Sandra Weiss, Neumann’s program director of Clinical Laboratory Science cites the
2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook (US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics) to emphasize that job opportunities in CLS are expected to be excellent. According to the publication, employment of clinical laboratory workers is projected to grow faster than average for all occupations through the year 2014, as the volume of laboratory tests continues to increase with both population growth and the development of new types of tests.

Weiss put it succinctly. “There is a clinical laboratory personnel shortage,” she explains.

She also notes that the median annual earnings of medical and clinical laboratory technologists were $45,730 in May 2004. The middle 50 percent earned between $38,740 and $54,310.

4/24/07