When Chad Spicer changed careers, he traded his wetsuit for a lab coat.
Spicer is a biologist who worked for SeaWorld and Walt Disney World’s Living Seas in Orlando early in his career. Since 2021, he’s been a medical laboratory scientist (MLS) at Novant Health New Hanover Medical Group, which serves and supports medical clinics.
Both roles entail analyzing samples collected from patients. His former patients included fish and occasionally reptiles – mainly sea turtles. Today, they’re humans. His current patients are much easier to get samples from. More on that later.
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After 25 years of working with animals, he was ready for a change. “Coming out of college, this was a great job,” he said. “But it’s physically demanding and time-consuming. As my peers and I got older, it became tougher to keep up. And as we started having families, we began to look for better hours, and higher-paying jobs.”
Spicer’s wife, Kate – who’d also worked at SeaWorld – went to pharmacy school. The couple were ready to leave Florida but wanted to live near the coast. Kate had earned her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and loved the area.
Spicer had “always liked the lab aspect of my job,” he said. “I figured I could still work in a lab, but in a healthcare setting, and use my skills to help people.”
He returned to school – Southeastern Community College in Whiteville, North Carolina – for two years to earn a degree in medical lab technology, which, along with his bachelor’s degree in biology, qualified him to become a medical lab scientist (MLS). Shortly after earning his degree, his son, Ethan, now 4 1/2, was born. Spicer wanted better work hours before. Now, he needed them.
He landed a job at Novant Health New Hanover Medical Group and became one of six team members working in the on-site lab. Often, when you give a urine sample or have blood drawn at your yearly physical, those samples are sent to an off-site lab. But Spicer’s lab is inside the doctors’ office where he works. That’s known as a POL – or physician office laboratory.
At first, Spicer’s old and current jobs don’t appear to have much in common. But there are some surprising similarities. Here are eight.
1. Safety is paramount. Spicer used to get in shark tanks – and not the metaphorical kind. “Before a shark could have a physical, we’d have to catch them,” he said. “We’d get in the water, corral them and then put them on a stretcher so we could examine, get a blood sample, weigh and measure them. Three or four of us would have poles in our hands. We’d hold them vertically in front of us and create a wall as we lured them into the shallow end. Then, we’d lay a stretcher along the bottom, and as a shark swam over it, we’d sort of wrap them up in it like a burrito.”
Paramedics were always on hand. “We planned for the worst,” Spicer said. “Except for bull sharks, the sharks we were dealing with (like sand tiger sharks, lemon sharks, brown sharks and – at Disney, hammerheads) weren’t overly aggressive. We weren’t in deep water with them, which made it easier to maneuver ourselves.”
But even with those precautions, things could go awry.
People might lose their footing and slip. And “the sharks, even when wrapped up, would still thrash around,” he said. “They don’t like being held in one place. They could weigh up to 300 pounds, and they’re very muscular. When they start flopping a tail around, they might hurt someone. Some people got bitten, but no one ever needed more than a few stitches.”
Nothing Spicer does now comes close to being as risky as swimming with sharks, although he said, “With biological samples, you have to be careful. But there are so many safety protocols in place that I never feel like I’m in danger.”
2. Speed is a requirement. When handling a shark, you have to act fast. “We were always on a time limit,” he said. “The sharks weren’t supposed to be held stationary for more than 10 minutes. To ventilate them, we’d pump oxygenated water over their gills while they were stationary. Even so, they can build up lactic acid in their muscles, which can be dangerous.”
In his current role, Spicer and his team can usually get doctors lab results the same day.
3. He’s still around water. Spicer grew up in Hawaii and never wants to be too far away from sand and surf. “I spent my whole life in and around water,” he said. He doesn’t mind that his job is on dry land, as long as he has access to the beach on the weekends.
4. Working with doctors is a feature of both jobs. “I used to work with veterinarians to diagnose and treat illness for the animals in my care,” he said. “Now, I work to ensure the doctors have reliable and precise test results to diagnose and treat people.”
5. Analyzing bodily fluids is a key component of both jobs. In Spicer’s former career, he analyzed fluids – primarily blood, skin swabs and intestinal samples using just a microscope – for animals. Now, he does the same thing for humans but so much more in terms of sample variety and methodology
Getting a stool sample from a shark is tricky. “When sharks would defecate, we’d try to collect it as soon as possible it in a bag,” he said. He doesn’t have to work that hard to get samples now.
6. In both roles, Spicer is (was) the first line of defense for patients – whether human, fish or reptilian. Spicer and his marine biologist colleagues were charged with keeping animals healthy. The vets relied on them to notice when something was off about an animal’s behavior.
“We tracked everything – how much they ate, body condition, interactions with other animals and their swimming behavior,” he said. “We looked for changes, like swimming slower or faster than usual, and swimming patterns that might indicate a problem such as a nutritional deficiency or respiratory issue.”
Today, he’s often the first person to alert doctors to high or low critical values such as hemoglobin, potassium, glucose, to name just a few.
7. In both careers, he takes pride in reporting results doctors and patients can rely on. “In my old job, if I saw something amiss with test results, I’d work with vets to develop the right treatment plan that animal. I’m still looking at the same fluids and reporting those results.”
8. Both jobs are equally fulfilling. “I used to encounter sea turtles close to death,” he said. “After six months of rehab, we would release them back into the ocean. That was a thrill.”
Of course, there are differences in being an aquarist and a medical lab scientist.
Spicer used to use a pole to keep sharks at bay. The tool he uses most often now is a hematology analyzer – a machine that conducts complete blood count (CBC) tests. That’s often the first test a doctor requests to gauge a patient’s overall health. A CBC includes red blood cell, white blood cell, hemoglobin and platelet counts.
Does Spicer ever miss the animals he used to care for?
Absolutely. “Some of them were there before I started – and they’re still there today,” he said. “Just like your dog or cat has its own personality, turtles and sharks have personalities, too. My old job was perfect for the stage of life I was in then. But my current job is a much better fit for where I am now.”
