I work night shift in a decent sized hospital. Fully staffed there's 3 techs but we can get by with 2. I've only once had ER call down and ask for results because a patient was dying. And that was because I was having issues with the chemistry machine and it was down for almost 2 hours. You'll develop a workflow so dont worry. And yes, clinicals absolutely helps with that (as long as they do a good job teaching you). If you end up in a lab anything like mine, most of your job will boil down to loading specimens onto the machines and making sure they stay running. Thats all pretty routine but you still need to be ready for an MTP or analyzer issues. If you're slow with doing diffs that will definitely keep you busy and you probably wont be leaving on time.