since they bought the lab half an hour in the opposite direction from me. No openings have come up yet, and they probably won't any time soon. Their strategy has been to downsize labs through attrition (and drive people out slowly through no raises and by bringing in their own bully managers) to a skeleton crew. They fill in holes with per diem and part time new grads who need to get experience and a foot in the door. They leave only the most basic work at the hospital's satellite lab, doing the more advanced work at the main reference lab. The hospital labs don't turn a profit, but lock-in the reference lab work. So the hospital techs are viewed and treated as an expense rather than revenue producer.
If I could sell my house I would leave the area. I'm not real hopeful there, but anything could change.
And the bottom line for me is that, as much as I loved the general sciences, from the 1st clinical course I have hated it. I hate the physical environment: always suffocatingly hot and sweaty, or freezing. The air is horribly dry and so many chemicals around that I have chronic stuffiness and my eyes turn bloodshot within 30 minutes of arrival. Like most places, some of the people are nice, but the lead techs and management are not. The work ranges from boring to awful/stressful. I hate being at everybody's "beck and call," which unfortunately is the nature of service work.
I hate the level of stress. It is one thing to feel somebody's life is in your hands. It is another thing to feel that way, only you are alone in the lab, it is 2 am and the phone is ringing off the hook, you have tests to run from one end of the lab to the other, the instrument just failed qc again, the nurse entered the order wrong and is screaming at you for not showing up to a timed draw, you are so exhausted you are staggering and nauseous, ER is calling for results that they know you can't have yet, and so on. Or to have to go draw blood, at 5am after 11 hours nonstop work, from a dying woman who's arms and hands are shrunken, black and veinless. As if her being actually allowed to sleep until 7 or 8 and drawn by a professional phlebotomist who draws dozens a day would somehow be more harmful. All this for $16 and change.
My last job paid almost as much but, once I learned it, had only a tiny fraction of the stress, nobody would die if you made a mistake or the computer died, and the physical environment must much more comfortable. I'd actually consider going back to that if they were hiring, but they won't be before the next tax season. So instead I plan to apply at several very local places for low key work that will keep me going until I'm 62 or until I sell my house, whichever comes first.
I'm leaving this field. Period.
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