Medical Laboratory Professionals Week Spotlight: Meet Stacie D.
When you sign on as a traveling medical laboratory professional, you know you’ll learn and grow from the experience, no matter where you work.
That was the plan for medical laboratory technician Stacie D. from the outset. She’s delighted with how much she’s learned since starting her MLT travel career a few years ago.
“Growing my resume is a huge goal,” says Stacie. “I want to be a ‘super traveler.’ I want it to be when you see my resume, you can’t not pick me. You’ll say, ‘We have to get this girl.’”
Any hospital that lands Stacie is very fortunate, too, according to AMN Healthcare senior recruiter Jessica C.
“Stacie is an expert in her field and loves to teach in addition to learning from other clinicians, shining light on what a good team player she is,” says Jessica. “Stacie is a born leader who executes working well under pressure, thinking outside of the box, living her life well in the travel world.”
Carrying on The Traveler Tradition
Stacie’s first assignment as a traveling medical laboratory professional took her to Thermopolis, Wyoming, which was quite the change from her hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. But her father had been a nuclear medicine technologist traveler, and she was eager to follow in his footsteps.
“That’s what got me interested in traveling,” she says. “He traveled most of my childhood, and wherever he would go, I would get to go spend a weekend or every other weekend with him. I got to see so much of the country with my dad.”
Stacie also loved visiting the lab with her father when she was growing up. So when she graduated from college with a degree in chemistry, she got a job as a lab assistant at a hospital in Atlanta. The hospital needed medical technicians, so they paid for her to complete an accelerated med-tech program.
“So as soon as I became a tech, I was like, ‘I am going to do this. I’m going to travel,’” she says.
Six months later, Stacie was headed to a 10-bed hospital in Thermopolis, a small town known for its mineral hot springs.
“This hospital in this tiny little town in Wyoming basically said, ‘We’ll take you and we’ll teach you. Just come,’” Stacie recalls. “So I drove 24 hours through a crazy snowstorm to Wyoming.”
From a Tiny Hospital To a Huge Medical Center
Stacie found that she loved Wyoming. She gained a tremendous amount of professional experience being what she called the “everything person” for the small hospital. She extended her initial contract and stayed there for 10 months.
“I had the time of my life,” she says. “It was a great way to kick off my traveling career.”
From there, she moved around, taking assignments in Texas, Georgia, and Maryland. Most recently, she landed at a huge, 1,000-bed healthcare facility in Norfolk, Virginia, where she’s working evening shifts.
“This is the biggest, busiest hospital I’ve ever worked at in my life,” she says. “It feels like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy every day.”
The bustling facility has also given her an amazing professional opportunity: Stacie will soon be a blood bank specialist. Because the hospital has a great deal of technology to do its own blood testing, she’s been able to learn new tasks that she would have normally sent to the American Red Cross to do. For example, she’s been learning how to type patients with multiple antibodies. She is using solid-phase technology to do testing, which is new to her.
“It’s fancy,” she says of the technology. “It’s really cool.”
Advice for Future MLT Travelers
Stacie’s not planning on slowing down anytime soon. She loves her work as a medical lab tech, and she loves her traveling lifestyle that allows her the time and budget to take her beloved family on trips to places as diverse as Denver and Dubai.
Her advice for other medical laboratory professionals who’d like to try out the traveler lifestyle:
Be Open-minded and flexible
“Be flexible about where you go because sometimes those little, small towns that nobody thinks they want to go to are the ones where you will have the time of your life, like I did,” says Stacie.
Work With Your Recruiter
Your recruiter can help you out in so many ways. Stacie appreciates the way that her recruiter Jessica keeps her best interests in mind at all times. “We’re a team,” says Stacie. “I trust her. Nobody has made me feel safer than Jessica does.”
Learn as Much as You Can
“That was my attitude: ‘Please teach me, teach me,’” Stacie says. “Even though I’ve been doing this for a few years now, that has never gone away.”
Take Care of Yourself
Stacie recommends that travelers prioritize self-care. “Make sure that you do something for yourself, including your mental health,” she says. “Sometimes you can feel isolated, and that can be hard. So you have to take care of that.” As for Stacie, she’s a self-described “fitness junkie” who loves to hit the gym for some weight training. She’s also dedicated to spending time with her dog, a Chihuahua mix named Marley.
Discover Traveling for Medical Lab Professionals
Want to know more about your travel options? AMN Healthcare has assignments around the country for medical lab techs, technologists and other allied health professionals, and a team of experts who will prepare you for success.
