Grow Your Own Journey Series Kimberly Pooler

KIMBERLY POOLER
MEDICAL LAB SCIENTIST

She credits SLV Health’s leadership and work colleagues in the lab as being supportive and appreciative of her knowledge and experience.

After attending Alamosa High School until she was 16, Kimberly graduated from Pasco HS in Washington state and joined the Air Force for a couple of years where she met her husband, originally from Wisconsin. After traveling for several more years, they ended up back in the San Luis Valley.

Kimberly worked part-time as an instructor for the HIPPY program, a decent job, but not quite a career. After graduating from Adams State with her wildlife biology degree in 2003, she was looking for work but had a difficult time finding anything full-time. She took a job as a phlebotomist at San Luis Valley Health where she received on the job training and found out she really liked this type of work!

She had student debt payments which motivated her to want more education, training, and a better career path. She then got her master’s in education from ASU and became a local high school science teacher. Even though she liked the instruction side of the job, she wasn’t thrilled with classroom management and left education to become a quality assurance potato plant inspector.

She kept in touch with the SLVH lab colleagues and found out from Brent Lehto that now there was a part-time position open that would allow her to study for her Medical Lab Technician (MLT) degree. The timing was great because many of the classes were online as a hybrid program, which allowed her to continue working! San Luis Valley Health paid for the tuition and books and worked around her schedule when she needed to drive to Otero in person. She graduated in December 2021 with her MLT and has absolutely loved her career in the medical laboratory at SLVH!

Because she already had an undergrad degree in science, she was able to study for and pass her MLS, which is a 4-year degree program where you become a Medical Laboratory Scientist. With this degree, she is responsible for performing scientific testing on samples and reporting those results to physicians. She now also teaches part-time for Otero’s MLT classes.

She is very happy, loving this career, and enjoying giving back in her meaningful work and as an instructor. She credits SLV Health’s leadership and work colleagues in the lab as being supportive and appreciative of her knowledge and experience.
She laughed when asked about getting mixed up with her identical twin, Kary Etter, who works in the SLVH RMC ED admissions. “I answer to Kary and I’m sure she answers to Kimberly, too.”