Technical Standards for
Medical Laboratory Technician
and
Laboratory Phlebotomy Technician Programs
Technical standards are the essential nonacademic requirements of the program that a student must be able to master to participate successfully in the MLT or LPT programs and become employable. Applicants for these programs must possess the following list of technical abilities and skills. If you are not sure that you will be able to meet these technical standards, please consult with the Program Coordinator of Medical Laboratory Technology for further information and to discuss individual situations.
Any student with special needs who is requesting reasonable accommodations or assistive technology may do so through the Office of Disabled Student Services.
- Speech: Ability to verbally communicate understandably in English.
- Hearing: Ability to understand English when spoken in person or via the telephone.
- Vision: Natural or corrected to 20/20, ability to distinguish red, yellow, and blue colors, distinguish clear from cloudy, and distinguish objects in the range of 1 micron through the microscope.
- Mobility: Ability to maneuver in the laboratory, around instruments, in confined spaces, and in patient rooms. Movement includes utilizing shoulders, arms, and neck; bending; twisting the body; standing; reaching and grasping overhead, in front of the body, and down.
- Fine Motor Control: Ability to manipulate small objects with fingertips or control adaptive devices.
- Coordination: Eye/hand and eye/hand/foot coordination.
- Reasoning: Ability to deal with abstract and concrete variables, define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions. Ability to interpret instructions furnished in oral, written, diagrammatic, or schedule form. Ability to deal with problems from standard situations. Ability to carry out detailed but uninvolved written or oral instructions. Ability to carry out one- or two-step instructions.
- Mathematics: Ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers and fractions, calculate time, use metric system for measurements, calculate percentages, solve for one variable, set-up and solve ratio and proportion problems, interpret simple statistical data.
- Reading: Ability to comprehend simple instructions or notations from a log book, ability to comprehend newspapers, manuals, journals, instructions in use and maintenance of equipment, safety rules and procedures and drawings.
- Writing: Ability to compose English sentences containing subject, verb, and object; complete notations in a log book, complete job applications, prepare business letters, write reports using prescribed format and conforming to rules of punctuation, spelling, grammar, diction and style.
- Perception: Ability to perceive pertinent detail in objects or in pictorial or graphic material; to make visual comparisons and discriminations and see slight differences in shapes and shadings of figures, and widths and lengths of line; to comprehend forms in space and understand relationships of plane and solid objects; the ability to visualize objects of two or three dimensions.
- Clerical: Ability to perceive pertinent detail in verbal or tabular material; to observe differences in copy, to proof-read words and numbers, and to avoid perceptual errors in arithmetic computation.
- Data: Ability to synthesize, coordinate, analyze, compile, compute, copy, and compare data standards for Medical Lab/Phlebotomy Technicians.
- Personal Traits: Ability to comprehend and follow instruction; perform simple and repetitive tasks; maintain a work pace appropriate to a given work load; relate to other people beyond giving and receiving instructions; perform complex or varied tasks; make generalizations, evaluations or decisions without immediate supervision; accept and carry out responsibility for directions, control and planning.
- Environmental: Ability to work indoors, be around moving machinery; factors: fumes, gases, odors, irritating particles, possible exposure to toxic or caustic chemicals, blood and body fluids, noise, radiation or electrical energy, vibration; work in confined spaces, use a computer monitor; work alone, with others, or around others.
- Safety Equipment Required to Wear: Safety glasses, face mask/shield, protective clothing, protective gloves.
