Being a Medical Laboratory Scientist as we know requires formal education and skill development but in addition, there are certain innate abilities and interests that are of added advantages to becoming exceptional at work, career roles, and creating new career horizons.
Also, there are many unexplored territories that one wonders what treasures we can find when Medical Laboratory Scientists spread their wings and fly for the greater good of the patients, other healthcare professionals, and people in society which I emphasized in my new book Lily In A Test Tube: The Treasures of Medical Laboratory Diagnostics for the Patients and Healthcare Professionals.In this article, we will take a look at how a Scientist can nominally identify and recognize, distinctly these personal interests that make him or her to gravitate towards different areas of operation, which are different from the departmental specialties like chemical pathology, hematology, etc.
The world is changing in the ways it defines functions, and new varieties of professional nomenclature blends are being introduced into career areas. In recent times there are medical laboratory scientists who are venturing into new conventional and unconventional fields like molecular diagnostics, public health, logistics, data analysis, content development, professional educational development, politics etc. and sometimes they seem to be blurred in stating who they are in reference to the primary qualification of being a medical laboratory scientist. I often hear these kinds of scientists introduce themselves as, I’m xxxx, a medical laboratory scientist but I’m not practicing, or I’m xxxx a medical laboratory scientist but I work in xxxx.
So, having observed this I entered may creativity crib and added to the list of nomenclatures that may already be known bearing in mind that they are not exhaustive nor official nomenclatures yet, but some creative ideas for now.
- Medical laboratory diagnostic scientist. This is for scientists whose interest is working in routine and specialized diagnostic laboratories.
- Medical laboratory research scientist. This is for those venturing into basic experimental and clinical research.
- Medical laboratory epidemiology or public health scientist. This is for those working in non-governmental organizations that do public health laboratory services and surveillance functions.
- Medical laboratory molecular scientist. This is for scientists that are venturing into genetic and genomic diagnostics.
- Medical laboratory forensic scientist. This is for those venturing into forensic studies.
- Medical laboratory logistics scientist. This is for those who are into laboratory equipment, reagents, and materials supplies.
- Medical laboratory data scientist. This is for those venturing into data organization and analyses.
- Medical laboratory political scientist. This is for those engaging in political functions in the civic space.
- Medical laboratory educational scientist. This is for those venturing into educational content creation for professional development.
- Medical laboratory content development scientist. This is for those engaging in multimedia content creation.
- Medical laboratory academic scientist. This is for those providing educational services in the universities, colleges of education, polytechnics etc.
- Medical laboratory fertility scientist. This is for those venturing into reproductive health and diagnostics.
- Medical laboratory health communication scientist. This is for those engaging in public health communication using local and multimedia.
- Medical laboratory human capital development scientist. This is for those engaging in personal and corporate human capital development works.
- Medical laboratory human resource management scientist. This is for those into human resource works.
Can you from the list find your sphere of interest?
We have been talking a lot about scientists venturing into new areas, thus, these are some point leads. By these, one doesn’t have to think that venturing into new areas blurs out using the nomenclature of medical laboratory scientist so long as you are making contributions to any area within the health sector. In fact, we must by all means retain our name seeing it will emphasize the diverse values we offer to society especially in the health sector. One can also venture into more than one of these areas as one’s capacity can carry.
It’s important to state that these are not just areas that we can decide to go get employed into but we have to think of them as territories to build up and provide opportunities for upcoming scientists. Just like a tree that grows many branches for birds to build their nests.
We must also as professionals give regards to these different areas for what they are and not think that one is greater than the other. We must remember that the premise is following one’s interest. Everybody must be allowed to follow their interest without feeling that one area is better than the other, which defeats the entire principle of interest-ability-career alignment.
In all, new horizons are fundamentally discovered if people in professional fields pay attention to grow along with their innate abilities and interests as these are what really make the difference for a profession in the long run.
So, which of these scientists are you?
