RN or Med Lab Tech?

[jdchisolm68]

43yr old male...all pre-reqs are complete...already have a Bachelors in business and have a 3.9 gpa for the RN program but I've been working as a CNA for experience and have been looking more at the Med Lab Tech program instead of the RN program...(working in an LTC and seeing what the RN's do may have discouraged me)..The salaries is not an issue but job availability and enjoyment of the work is....any RN's that would do it differently?...I'll probably apply to both and then decide...any advice would be greatly appreciated

[dirtyhippiegirl, BSN, RN]

I have a lot of lab experience. If you like a lot of repetitive, fairly non-thinking work for fairly decent pay -- lab tech is good for you. It's definitely - overall - cleaner then RN work. You still deal with a lot of potentially and probably contaminated blood, stool, and urine samples. But you're not wiping butts. To not be exposed daily to stuff like VRE, MRSA, etc. your best bet is to get into clinical trials (I did heme-onc clinical trials for two years) or something else more specialized.