MEDICAL LAB ASSISTANT

Overview

 

Medical Lab Assistant, General Laboratory

Full Time, 80 Hours Per Pay Period, Night Shift

Hours from 6p-6:30a with rotating weekends

 

Fort Sanders Regional Overview:

Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center is an award-winning, certified, and accredited facility with 541 beds. As a Joint Commission Comprehensive Stroke Center, Fort Sanders offers state-of-the art care that maximizes recovery from stroke.  We are also the region’s leader in technology in areas such as bariatric surgery, robotic surgery and minimally invasive spine surgery. Our door-to-balloon times for heart attack patients are below the national average, and our hip fracture center offers advanced diagnosis, surgery and recovery procedures for hip patients.

 

Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center is a member of Covenant Health, a locally-owned, non-profit health system based in Knoxville, TN, with a “patient-focused” culture. It has been recognized by Forbes Magazine as its 2020 “Best-in-State-Employer” for Tennessee. The CEO of our company, Jim VanderSteeg, attends every new employee orientation and will ask you to sign our pledge of excellence to always put patients first, strive for excellence in everything we do, and make Covenant Health the first and best choice for patients in our region. As you’d expect, we offer our employees a robust benefits package, including: offering unmatched medical insurance, tuition reimbursement; student loan repayment assistance, certification bonuses; leadership and professional development programs; an employer-matched 401(k); and a generous Combined Time Off (CTO) program.

 

Department Description:

FSRMC Laboratory is a high volume lab with a family feel.  FSRMC performs >2 million tests per year.  Being a part of a large health system and being the primary reference lab for our system of 9 hospitals you will have the ability to see a wide array of patient and specimen types that can be challenging and exciting at the same time.  Aside from the everyday tests that most labs perform we are also capable of performing mycology, antibody investigations in blood bank, infectious disease testing and many special chemistry tests. 

 

We have state of the art instruments that include the Ortho Vision, Beckman Cellavision, Roche Cobas Pros, Beckman DXH 900s, Vitek 2, Cepied GenXpert, Beckman Iris, Stago Compact Maxs and many others.  Our patient population includes complex cancer patients, high risk OB/GYN patients, infectious disease patients and open heart patients.  We also have the privilege of being a part of a Primary Stroke Center which allows us to play an integral role in helping save precious brain function of stroke victims.

 

Position Summary: 

The Medical Laboratory Assistant performs the pre-analytical and preparatory portion of the testing process for routine and specialized clinical Lab tests for use in diagnosis and treatment of patients by physicians.  The individual will perform only those processes that s/he has been trained and found competent in performing.  Must also be able to perform the duties of a Sr. Laboratory Assistant.

 

Recruiter: Jennifer Gordon || jgordon2@covhlth.com || 865-374-8107

Responsibilities

• Performs preparatory functions necessary to complete routine and high complexity tests that the individual has been trained in. Functions include:
• centrifuging; pouring off blood, body fluid, and urine specimens; preparing specimens for testing; and archiving specimens
• checking applicable specimens for clots if needed prior to proceeding for testing
• performing pipetting techniques for appropriate specimen preparations
• preparing peripheral blood smears for staining for microscopic examination
• staining peripheral blood smears by automated method
• loading primary bar-coded clinical specimens on any trained analyzer
• preparing microbiology specimens for cultures and gram stains, including inoculation of microbiology culture plates from primary clinical specimens, slide preparation and staining by automated method
• preparing specimens for KOH examinations
• preparing specimens for GMS stains for pathology and track according to protocol
• preparing and loading blood culture specimens into appropriate incubators
• preparing specimens for PCR testing
• preparing viral culture specimens for testing by appropriate reference laboratory, and completing required regulatory documentation
• preparing 24-hour urine containers with preservatives
• receiving and tagging new reagent inventory, and sorting by lot number to separate current versus new reagent lot numbers
• performing required quality