At Soap Opera General, the leading characters are doctors and nurses, but in a real-life hospital, a key role is that of the medical technologist.

Working behind the scenes, medical technologists provide the essential information doctors and nurses need to diagnose, treat and prevent illness in the 21st century. Without the work of the laboratory professional, patient care would involve potentially dangerous guesswork.

Still, medical technology, or clinical laboratory science, is "a hidden career. It's not [obvious] like nursing," says Cheryl Katz, HNS '72, who graduated as a "med tech." Katz now is administrative director of the medical and pathology labs at Christiana Health System's Christiana and Wilmington hospitals in Delaware.

Lydia Ruth Witt, HNS 2002, agrees. A senior in the medical technology program, Witt says, "It seems like nobody knows what a med tech is. All my friends used to think I was going to be a nurse, until I explained exactly what the job entailed."

Medical technologists are professionals with bachelor's degrees. They are certified by the National Credentialing Agency for Laboratory Personnel and/or the ASCP Board of Registry and are qualified to analyze virtually all body fluids. And, contrary to what some lay people may believe, their skills have not been replaced by machines.

Deb Costa, HNS '76, an instructor in UD's Department of Medical Technology who coordinates the students' rotations through hands-on training in community labs, says medical tests that are done by instrument are primarily the routine ones. New, sophisticated tests have to be done manually, she says, as do the cell studies for cancer and other serious illnesses. Also, when instruments break or develop glitches, a technologist is needed to catch incorrect data, Costa adds.

Medical technology may lack the high profile of nursing, but the two professions share several desirable factors, labor analysts say: Both offer a secure future, a variety of career tracks, intellectual challenge and good pay. According to Les Frantz's Jobs Rated Almanac, medical technology ranked 16th among 250 jobs analyzed, using such criteria as salary, stress levels, work environment, job security and physical demands.

Nurses are ahead in income, but beginning medical technologists in the United States average $30,000-$36,000 a year, according to the federal Department of Labor. According to the web site Salary.com, a senior technologist in Wilmington, Del., earns about $40,668, and a supervisor of laboratory services, $71,721-$90,602.

In another similarity with nursing, lab techs today are in short supply. A May 2001 survey by the American Hospital Association found that 12 percent of budgeted technologist positions in hospitals were vacant. The labor department projects a 10-20 percent increase in jobs for medical technologists by 2008.

"It's a very competitive market at this point," Katz says.

In an effort to recruit new medical technology graduates, both Christiana and Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, Pa., have recently begun offering scholarships to seniors in the UD program. Another indication of the competitive job market--and the value placed on the University's program--is a special paid-internship program that Children's Hospital of Philadelphia designed for UD medical technology students last summer.

Alissa Marie Cohen, HNS 2002, says the internship was created after she attended a health services fair the University sponsored last February.

"I went with a few of my friends, who are also med tech students," Cohen says. "We were looking for possible internships. [Representatives of] Children's Hospital of Philadelphia were there. They said they didn't have a program for internship but that they'd talk to their supervisors and see if it would be possible to get something together."

Within a few days, she and her friends were interviewed and hired for the new program, working from early June until the middle of August. Witt worked in the hematology and coagulation lab, where blood is analyzed.

For the nine students who participated in the summer internship, the experience supplemented the clinical rotations, or practicums, that all students perform in the last half of their senior year, according to Costa. Costa coordinates and oversees the practicums, which may occur in any of 22 hospital or private clinical laboratories.

Most students go through Christiana Health System's labs at least once, Katz says, to make sure they have exposure to a large hospital with a large variety of illnesses and "to give them a chance to know us and us to know them."

Her hope is that students who feel at home at Christiana will want to return after graduation. Katz oversees about 130 laboratory technologists in the system's two hospitals and must deal with the large turnover that occurs when the supply of workers is small.

For Witt, deciding on a med tech major was easy. "I've always loved laboratory work, especially science class," she says. "Playing with the instruments and dissecting specimens was so much fun. I was always interested in the health field, and med tech lets me work in the lab and help others at the same time."

--Jane Harriman