Any Medical Lab Technologist turned Pharmacy students?
Started by kgard7777
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My wife was looking into MT (she graduated in dec. with a BS), but I am trying to steer her towards pharmacy. IMO pharmacy is much more diverse and has many more opportunities.
Hi,
I totally agree with you but I wonder if I finish the MT degree would it help me get in Pharmacy school? Also its a back up plan if I don't get in.. I had trouble with Intro to Chemistry in highschool so I have to see how this Pharmacy idea goes.
I totally agree with you but I wonder if I finish the MT degree would it help me get in Pharmacy school? Also its a back up plan if I don't get in.. I had trouble with Intro to Chemistry in highschool so I have to see how this Pharmacy idea goes.
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I dunno that it will help your application as far as getting accepted, but it certainly wouldn't hurt, especially if it made you more comfortable taking science classes. Pharmacy school is a huge lump of science based classes, so do whatever will best prepare you for that.
I worked as an MT for two years full time before pharmacy school. The first year has been pretty easy since a lot of it was a review undergrad for me. Also, it will help when they teach lab values next year, since I am the only one in my class that has actually run CBCs, UAs, etc.
I chose to go into pharmacy, because I just couldn't see myself going up further as a tech. Unless you want to go into supervisory or management roles, there really is not a whole lot you can do as an MT to go higher. There just seemed to be a lot more things that I can do with a PharmD that seemed interesting to me.
It is also nice that I can work less hours than my classmates and make more money as a lab tech.
I chose to go into pharmacy, because I just couldn't see myself going up further as a tech. Unless you want to go into supervisory or management roles, there really is not a whole lot you can do as an MT to go higher. There just seemed to be a lot more things that I can do with a PharmD that seemed interesting to me.
It is also nice that I can work less hours than my classmates and make more money as a lab tech.
MT turning Pharmacist right here. Starting in August. I wanted to stay in the medical field because I do enjoy the challenges of it. I actually like the work as a medical technologist, but we are way over educated (or way under paid or both). MTs take more difficult classes and get paid less than any other hospital 4 year degreed employee. It's not by a small margin either. MTs basically have no upward movement. You are a bench tech or you are management. That's basically it. It's rare to get promoted up into higher admin jobs. I also hated having to explain to everyone what a MT was. I hated people thinking I was a phlebotomist. I hated the fact that people thought you didn't need any degree or brains to do an MTs job. Maybe I had it rough here, but I doubt it. These kind of complaints are common for MT. I'm sure I'll catch a lot of the same crap, but at least I'll have more pay and more job options.
I guess I feel the MT degree is a great stepping stone, but a horrible career choice.
Even in the medical community, you will find people that do not know what an MT is. You would think that health care workers that monitor lab tests, like nurses, doctors, pharmacists, etc would know where the tests come from.
Nope. They don't know or care. It's like we have magical hospital Oompa Lompas to do it, not real people.
It sounded like my interviewer was impressed by my background. She was not actually a faculty at the college though. I think I lucked out, because she had considered MT before going to pharmacy school so she knew more about the profession than others at the college.
Actually, my application caused some confusion in some of their meetings. They thought that only community colleges trained lab techs, but I had a UT transcript showing the degree come from the university. They finally figured it out after the dean made some calls.
I did not find out about this confusion until the Fall when I started talking to some of the professors. It would start out like, "So you're the one that we were so confused about...didn't make sense because we thought you went to ACC, but you had a UT transcript...😕😕..."
Well, considering you are taking harder classes than 95% of your competition, yes. If you do well.
