Posted by “I’m from a small town just outside of the Halifax Regional Municipality,” says Courtney Coulter. “I had worked for the hospital in the area, where I got some experience working with children. That’s when I knew, the IWK would be a perfect fit for me!”
Coulter is a medical laboratory assistant (MLA) and the Outpatient Department (OPD) Blood Collection Team Lead at IWK Health. As an MLA she is responsible for a lot of pre-analytical processes such as collecting blood, processing samples, and getting them ready for the analytical phase.
“I work mostly in the outpatient lab, where we see a wide variety of patients ranging from babies to adults,” says Coulter. “Sometimes I coordinate with the psychiatry department to meet with patients, and we walk them through what is expected. We introduce them to needles and the environment and come up with different strategies and approaches to make it a better experience.”
“I will continue to try and find new ways to make blood collections better for both parents and their children,” says Coulter. “It gives me great satisfaction helping people cope with their fear of bloodwork because it is very common.”