Phlebotomy Certification Steps

Phlebotomists are professionally trained in the field of phlebotomy and their fundamental job is to collect blood from patients.  If you have a child or if you even remember the first time you sat down in a chair next to a nurse or doctor who was going to draw your blood, you can understand the anxiety that most young children might have.  Therefore it is one of the necessary requirements that phlebotomists be able to handle all kinds of patients, and be able to provide a calm demeanor and pain free blood extraction.  With the projected job growth in the field of phlebotomy according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, this offers potential job applicants with a wonderfully steady medical career.

Where Jobs Are Available?

A person entering this field of practice can pretty much find a job in this field in nearly any local medical facility, because there are always hiring opening occurring.  Local hospitals, laboratories, The Red Cross centers, medical clinics and even many nursing homes hire trained professional phlebotomists due to an ever growing demand for these specialists. The great thing about the field of phlebotomy is that once you enter it, you an ideal opportunity to gain all sorts of paid benefits and salary growth as you’re on the job experience grows. Of course your pay and salary opportunities are going to be tied to how much previous education and professional training you have received, and most medical hiring personnel will require that you have obtained certification from one of the national phlebotomy certification associations.

Job Types

Once you are in the phlebotomy field you will very quickly be able to ascertain that there truly are no limitations to your ability to rise in the field and receive the type of medical job responsibilities and salary your training demands.  There are several jobs in the phlebotomy field that are on an advanced tier, and do require that you return to school for additional education.  Many of these advanced jobs are in the supervisory or technical analysis fields and a bachelor of science in medical technology or a graduate or PhD in microbiology, chemistry or even medicine are certainly within the realm of attainment if you desire. In some cases your current employer may have a vested interest in providing educational advancement support benefits, so it would be prudent to speak to your human resource manager about this possibility.

Job Pay

When you consider being a part of the medical profession, the rate of pay should not necessarily be the determining factor for your decision, because it is not going to be great.  Yet, because the medical profession is realizing a tremendous boost in growth in all fields, it is certainly reasonable to expect that the average pay ranging from $20,000 to $25 or $26,000 a year will be headed upward.  One of the great employments that a professional phlebotomists can expect is the incredible demand that hospitals, medical labs and clinics of all types and areas, are placing on locating professionally trained and highly skilled phlebotomists and are quite willing to pay as high as $40,000 a year or more to hire and retain them.

When you are sitting in a doctor’s office or at a medical center or hospital for a checkup you will typically be requested to provide a blood sample for routine tests. The person doing the requesting can vary between a doctor, nurse, or a phlebotomist. The actual drawing blood procedure is called venipuncture. Although this may seem like quite a routine procedure, there are many, many things that could possibly wrong if a trained professional is not performing this necessary procedure. As a matter of fact, a number of serious medical complications like injury to your veins, exposure to infectious diseases because of re-used needles or syringes, are just a couple problems that can result from an untrained person’s efforts. This is why it is paramount that a person receives certified training before they begin undertaking using venipuncture procedures on patients.

What Is It?

As begin to settle into your doctor’s office with your young child, or perhaps and elderly relative or friend, and the attending nurse or other medical personnel asks if they can perform a venipuncture procedure, you might be taken aback. The truth of the matter is that the medical staffer is simply asking if blood can be drawn so that it can be tested. The process is actually performed hundreds of thousands of times a week by EMT’s, paramedics, nurses, doctors and others trained in the practice of phlebotomy. Without the venipuncture procedure being used, there really would not be a reliable way to diagnosis what exactly is occurring in your body’s cells regarding the possible presence of disease and how far it may have progressed. Venipuncture is a crucial tool in the medical practitioner’s diagnostic array of tools used to determine quickly and accurately your present medical condition.

Process Used

As a general rule the most common venipuncture procedure is to draw blood from what is called the median cubital vein. You have probably seen the vein when the phlebotomist tapped it before the blood was drawn, because it is positioned near the surface of the skin and is easily accessible. When little babies or infants have sampled and not drawn, a phlebotomist will use what is termed the finger stick method, where the sampling is gathered from a finger stick or even heel stick. You will also notice that after the needle is stuck in your vein, the blood is extracted into a vacuum tube. This vacuum tube method is very efficient as well a effective and can result in allowing several tubes of blood being drawn by one needle stick, it is necessary.

Training

Assured When you submit yourself to a venipuncture procedure you can rest the person on the other end of the needle has received certified training and in 48 or 50 states has passed a certified exam process. When phlebotomy students attend a phlebotomy program or school, it is absolutely mandatory that the student become skilled in the practice of venipuncture. In addition, a phlebotomy student will also have to become proficient in human anatomy, study of veins and arteries as well as physiology. Therefore as you sit in that chair, you can feel some degree of relief that the care and welfare of your veins are as important to the medical professional performing the venipuncture procedure as it is to you.

While you may have been one of those in high school or perhaps younger dreamed of making a difference by going into the medical field and becoming a doctor, and then decided that it was a lot more work than you wanted, the field of phlebotomy is one you should consider.  The trained phlebotomist is not a medical doctor but is certainly an integral member of a medical team that will work tirelessly to find answers to your medical problems. The salary to start is certainly competitive and it allows you the room to advance in the field of knowledge, skill and salary opportunities as you mature in your professional practice.  One possibility is to be able to continue your educational climb after you are certified and gradually, you may end up a highly skilled  and highly paid specialist or medical systems manager or higher.

Begin Your Training

Everyone who enters the field of phlebotomy has to begin somewhere and meet some very basic educational requirements to begin their training.  In order to qualify for the great majority of phlebotomy training schools and programs you must have attained at least a high school diploma or a GED certificate.  It would also be advisable if you have excelled in certain higher mathematic courses in high school or even entry-level college.  Another thing that will help you for consideration is having obtained some people oriented skills training or life work experience that highlights you ability to work well with putting people at ease. You will be expected to begin your course of study with the complete understanding that you will be handling blood as well as learning how to take blood from patients since that is essentially the foundation of your future employment work.

Professional Training

Part of your future salary will actually begin and continue while you are going through the phlebotomy program training.  Many of the test requirements and employer demands will be based upon how well you have performed in your work training as well as classroom and exam achievement.  Therefore it would certainly behoove you to be quite serious and quite committed to the class work as well as to the on-the-job training that you may be required to take part in a part of your professional study.  Being familiar with all aspects of the job regimen, including, be able to maintain lab and office medical records, taking patient blood, using all lab equipment, and fully understanding the basics of human anatomy will be expected.

After Certification:

Once you have obtained your phlebotomy certification you will be able to go on the job market and seek professional phlebotomist jobs in hospital, medical centers, professional labs, and even community health centers.  The starting salary will largely depend upon the geographic area that you live in, your educational achievement as well as how you performed and excelled in your phlebotomy training.  To start, you can expect to begin at an average of $20,000 to $25,000 plus.  While this may not seem like an earth shaking salary, it is certainly a wonderful beginning in a field where you can advance in salary, skill and responsibility of your desire is there.

The notion that going into your family doctor’s office as a young child was probably a little nerve wracking because having your blood drawn with what seemed to be a very large needle was not a welcomed thought.  Yet, if you were one of the fortunate ones who had a nurse or a doctor who had been trained in the medical skill of phlebotomy, then you ended up at ease, because there were no two and three sticks with a needle. There was usually only one, and it was done with little or no effort.  Obtaining blood through precise and disciplined measures and skill is what a trained phlebotomist does, and in order to do so, he or he must obtain phlebotomy certification. The certification assures the employer as well as the patient that the person is highly trained and skill and that there will be minimum discomfort involved in the taking of a blood sample.

Why Phlebotomy Certification is Necessary

Before there was certification of phlebotomists there was a lack of uniformity in what exact standardized procedures existed for the taking and care of blood. This type of undisciplined practice resulted in many blood samples being misdiagnosed, stored improperly and in far too many cases damage to arms, nerves and patient veins.  The even more alarming problem was the advent of exposure of the patient as well as the worker to avoidable infection risks as well as serious problems arising from mishandling infectious materials. By standardizing how blood would be taken, stored and hazardous material would be handled in the lab; it eliminated to a large extent the practice of unprofessional phlebotomy habits.

Training for Certification

Since the learn as you go inefficiencies of acquiring phlebotomy training has gone by the wayside, the health care industry has become more advanced as has the training.  Safety, responsibility and professionalism is foremost and with a simple high school diploma or a GED certificate a person can head fully into the field if they have a desire and drive. Of course the first step toward this career path is being able to handle the taking of blood and not finding it difficult to be around other body fluids that also may become part of the job description.  Most of the phlebotomy training courses can range in time from two months to six months. You could also go further in your phlebotomy studies by obtaining an associate or bachelor’s degree as well. In some cases, a phlebotomist may be so intrigued by the field of story that they go on and pursue a medical degree to complete their field of study.

Phlebotomy Certification

In most cases after you have passed a phlebotomy diploma course and received a diploma or certificate you have to wait a certain amount of time before the state allow you to take the phlebotomy test and receive your certification.  The phlebotomy certification will open up all type of professional job and career opportunities and depending largely upon your experience in the field or educational achievement you can begin in the mid-20’s in terms of salary and benefits.

The Phlebotomy test is the last step in the process of becoming a certified phlebotomist, yet there is so much more that precedes the final step that you must be prepared for in order to become a certified and trained professional.  To become a phlebotomist  you must have an a great desire to want to be part of a medically trained group of  professionals who understand the procedures, and testing methods necessary after the blood has been drawn from the patient.  You will obtain the skills from either a college, professional school, or even from the Red Cross, if your state permits certification testing from this training venue.  Once you are successful in passing the certification exam you will receive an official American Society for Clinical Pathologists phlebotomy technician certificate.

Qualities to Have

When you begin the road to taking the phlebotomy test, you have to make the determination that this is exactly the field that you want to enter, because some may feel squeamish at the sight of drawing blood.  This practice is a professional skill and drawing or extracting blood from a patient so that it can be analyzed and screened is only meant for those that have a passion for it. You can begin this road toward the phlebotomy test by just having a high school diploma or a GED certificate.  Apply at a school or training program that offers you a phlebotomy certificate or diploma after you have successfully completed the program.  Being a person who likes to comfort people and help them to be at ease and relax is definitely a plus human quality trait you should possess.

Preparing For the Certification Exam

There are for all practical purposes two avenues that can take you to being able to take the phlebotomy test.  Of course the course works that you can take if you attend a phlebotomy certificate or diploma program.  The other, is having some previous training in the medical field which would have prepared you with skill and knowledge in order to take the test.  Either way it is still a solid idea that you prepare for the test by obtaining one of the phlebotomy test study guides that are available.  There are even practice tests available as well which will allow you to be better acquainted with the type of test questions that may appear on the test.  While the rest is by no measure easy, if you have thoroughly prepared yourself in your study preparation, you should not encounter any problems in passing.

The Phlebotomy Test

Essentially the phlebotomy test will cover the major substantive areas of phlebotomy that were taught in the diploma or certificate programs.  For instance, the location of veins, arteries and arterial puncturing techniques are typically area covered on the test.  In addition,  collecting medical data, medical theoretical classes and what can a professionally trained phlebotomist deduce from blood samples taken will most likely appear as well.  How one is to preserve the blood once it is taken will usually appear as part of the test questions as well.