From an abundance of jobs within the medical field to the dental office, lab techs provide much-needed services. They prepare specimens while using machines that analyze samples. As they follow detailed instructions to run tests day by day, we neglect to notice the role they play in helping patients, namely, helping save their lives.

From Lab Tech School to Life as a Medical Lab Technician
When you go to the doctor, he may perform a laboratory test to help figure out what's wrong with you. Typically, those lab tests are sent to medical lab technicians to interpret. Tests include samples of body fluids, cells, or tissues that are often prepared into slides for microscope examination.

Lab techs also run tests to chemically analyze samples in order to see if they are abnormal or diseased. If your samples are abnormal, medical

lab technicians

will try to identify the organisms living in you. Bacteria, for instance, indicates an infection. Once lab technicians run tests, the results are forwarded to your doctor who will make the proper determination based on what the lab tech identifies.

Not only do lab techs identify problems through tests, they also prepare vaccines and serums. A lab technician might grow cell cultures, for instance. If grown in the right medium and temperature, these cell cultures can help prevent infection in others later on.

Dental Lab Tech
Dental lab technicians are sometimes confused with dental hygienists, but they have very different roles. In fact, the only patient contact they have is when there's an unusual situation and a visual inspection of the patient's teeth is required of them.

Like medical lab techs, dental lab technician provide behind-the-scenes support to dentists. Once a dentist takes a mold of a patient's teeth, for instance, the dental technician uses that mold to produce a wax replica of the teeth. This way, the dentist can construct crowns, bridges, or false teeth as needed of the patient.

Examining the Job Outlook of Lab Techs
While wages vary by employer and area of the country in which one works, lab techs can have very lucrative careers. Education and level of experience play major factors in how much salary a lab tech commands. A medical lab technician can make as much as $23.66 an hour or more; and, while median hourly earnings for dental lab technicians are about $14.93, they can make as much as $25.48 an hour or more.

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