Medical Technician

The Oral Microbiology Laboratory (OML) is under the administrative purview of the Division of Diagnostic Sciences and is a component of the Adams School of Dentistry. The OML provides diagnostic clinical microbiology, antimicrobial product testing; microbiology training; dental unit water line testing, and sterilizer monitoring services to both the Adams School of Dentistry and the community of dental practitioners in the state of North Carolina and surrounding geographic areas. These services are specifically related to oral microbiology and its application to the following: recognition and assessment of oral bacterial populations in oral flora studies; isolation, identification and determination of antibiotic sensitivities of pathogens from oral infections; post treatment of oral infection; bacterial test for caries risk; infection control; microbiological monitoring of dental unit water lines and the monitoring of sterilization equipment unique to the dental practice. Sterilizer monitoring services and clinical microbiology services are also provided for a number of non-dental clients. Job Responsibilities:This position will primarily support the Sterilization Monitoring arm of the OML, which is a client based service that requires weekly testing of approximately 1,500 sterilizers. This involves the receipt of ~350 pieces of mail each day including test envelopes, payments and other laboratory samples. This position will be responsible for logging tests in and out of the SMS database, as well as administrative functions such as putting together and mailing out supply packets for service renewals. This position will be responsible for media preparation, quality control and spore strip setups and test interpretation, including Gram staining of bacterial isolates.Additionally, this position will be cross-trained to support the Clinical Diagnostic Microbiology arm of the OML, which receives and sets up oral clinical samples for culture and pathogen identification. This position will support Clinical Diagnostics by ordering cultures in database, setting up to various agar medias, and incubating at appropriate conditions.