Medical Laboratory Technician

Faezaeh: Hi guys, I’m Faezaeh. I work at Wellington SCL as a microbiology and molecular technician.

Laboratory technicians do different testing to find out what is causing a disease or an infection. We are basically like science detectives who are trying to help the doctors to diagnose and choose the correct treatment for the patient. It makes me feel like I'm doing something good in this world.

So microbiology is the study of micro-organisms, which could be things like bacteria or fungi. Molecular is just the same thing, but we’re looking for the genetic material of those micro-organisms. The difference is that in microbiology you have a sample that you can grow, and because you can grow, then you can do antibiotic testing that’s suitable for that bacteria, but in molecular you have a target, which could be a DNA and RNA, and that’s what you’re finding.

When you’re a laboratory worker you do shift work. I do 8am until 4.30. Sometimes I'll have to do 1pm until 10pm. I would look at what area I am covering and how many samples I have in the day that I need to be finishing before I go. But you can never predict the workload. It can always change day to day and season to season.

In my department I work with 40 people. We test community and hospital samples. So we do a variety of tests on different samples and those samples could be blood, urine, faeces. We do a lot of different kinds of swabs, which could be throat swabs, genital swabs, wound swabs and you get a lot of different bacteria and micro-organisms from all of these.

Today I’m doing faecal PCR. So these are for people who have gastrointestinal problems. They could have salmonella, they could have campylobacter. So that’s what we’re trying to find out by doing this testing.

I like how I have a variety of work because there’s so many areas that I can cover. Week to week we always get different micro-organisms, which makes it more interesting. I like how in microbiology things are colourful and every bacteria grows in different conditions. I like how sometimes it can challenge you to think in a different way.

I’m looking at some faecal results now. Someone analysed it earlier and I’m just doing a second check on it now before we finalise the result. This patient is positive for giardia. This patient is positive for campylobacter. This patient is positive for shigella. And I'm happy with all of them. Perfect. That is all done.

This role would suit someone who is passionate and interested in human health, and they like thinking in a scientific way, and they are up for a challenge. It’s also important to know it involves shift work. It’s physical. You could be on your feet all day, and it involves a lot of sample handling.

This looks like it’s so many samples but this is actually only for seven samples, and we’re on sample 27 and normally we do more than a hundred so it’s going to be lots of plates.

To get in this job you need a science-related Bachelor and after that you have to sit for an exam, which is a medical laboratory exam by the Medical Council. From there you need to work full time for one year to become a registered medical laboratory technician. From being a lab technician you can also get into research, or going into different labs to expand your experience.

We even have people here who are team leaders and managers but they used to be lab technicians. Keep in mind in some labs you can work full time and study part time to become a scientist. I’m passionate about helping people and that’s what I'm doing here. For me that’s the part that I enjoy the most – that I'm helping people.