Starting your career as a phlebotomist
To train, or not to train
To be honest, training in the UK is inconsistent, unregulated and non-standardised. There are Trainee Phlebotomist roles out there that don’t require you to have any training. They will take completely untrained individuals and provide an extensive programme of in-house training.
However, if I’m looking at a CV (and we look at many here at Bloods & beyond), even for an entry level role, and I can see an applicant has already attended a good quality venepuncture training course, giving them solid background knowledge and basic skills, they are instantly going to the top of my shortlist.
Our courses are specifically written to cover the CH132 National Occupational Standards for Obtaining Venous Blood Samples, ensuring you have all the knowledge you need to meet the minimum basic standards required by the NHS. You also benefit from becoming part of our network for the duration of your course to help supercharge your knowledge with the collective experience of over 100 phlebotomists.
Venepuncture Practices & Techniques
What’s next?
But, once you’ve completed your training, what next? Where do you get your first opportunity?
Unlike other medical professions, there is no defined career pathway for phlebotomists. If you want to be a nurse, for example, the pathway is quite straight forward. Enrol on a nursing degree, and there will probably be a job waiting for you when you qualify.
For a phlebotomist, it is not quite that simple. Every phlebotomist has there own story to tell about how they got into the role.The right place, at the right time
I remember training a lady who started as the cleaner at her local GP. From here she got a job on the reception, and from here she was asked if she would like to learn to take blood to assist the over worked phlebotomist. So her practice manager sent her on one of our courses.
I work with several phlebotomists who got their first opportunity after volunteering in a vaccination centre during the COVID19 pandemic, and were given the opportunity to learn to take blood as part of this role.
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know
A lot of phlebotomists will get their first opportunity to shadow and take some bloods through a friend who might work in a phlebotomy clinic or a GP surgery. Or who might be happy to supervise them as they complete our In-house Supervision Competency Certificate.
Seize the opportunities
Of course, not everyone is lucky enough to have had opportunities like these handed to them. Knocking on the doors of local GP surgeries without an ‘in’ can be a slog, and comes down to your own gift of the gab to get you’re foot in the door.
GP surgeries are laws unto themselves. If they want to be helpful, they will be. But if they want to find a reason not to help, it’s hard to argue with them. It is possible though, we have seen many success stories of phlebotomists getting their first opportunities through sheer determined grit, and not taking no for an answer.
For example, if a GP surgery rejects your offer to volunteer because of insurance issues, go and get yourself some insurance. It costs about £75 a year from MMI4U.
If they think GDPR will be an issue, you can boost your CV with a short, online GDPR course.
Ultimately, they might still reject your advances, but at least they will have to simply admit that they don’t want to help, and you’ll be better prepared for the next opportunity.
If you really find yourself frustrated, we have worked hard to create a CPD accredited Competency Certificate to ensure you have the opportunity to work in our phlebotomy clinic in Bakersfield for a shift.
Do the hard yards
It’s important to recognise that you might not jump straight into your dream phlebotomy job. You have to do the hard yards to build up your experience. This could include shadowing, volunteering or working for a very small wage. If you can get yourself on the bank at your local hospital, it is hard work, for not great pay, but absolutely invaluable experience, and a job where you can pick and choose your hours to top up your experience as and when you feel like it.
Once you’ve accrued enough experience, you can apply for jobs with agencies, and could even come and work with us at Bloods & beyond.
It’s important to fail
We would dearly love to be able to offer all of our trainees a job straight after their course. But unfortunately, the nature of working as a mobile phlebotomist means that you will be working on your own, with no back up or support.
We normally recommend that you must have taken at least 100 bloods in a clinical setting before you go out on the road. And not 100 successful bloods. It’s really important that you’ve missed a few, and you understand how to deal with that situation when it arises.
But nothing makes me prouder than when a trainee gets back in touch with us after a few months, and we are able to add them to our network.
At the heart of Bloods & beyond is a hope to provide more opportunities to phlebotomists, to use their skills to maximise their income.
A great place to start
This won’t be true in every area, but some great places to look for your first role are:
Boots – Boots run private phlebotomy clinics and will offer on the job training to new phlebotomists.
Superdrug – Superdrug offer a very similar service.
The NHS Blood Service – This service are always looking for volunteers, who can turn into employees. You can start as a ‘Donor Carer’, looking after the donors, pouring the orange juices and ensuring the Clubs and Penguins are all nicely displayed. But this could soon grow in to the role of pre-screening and finger prick testing, and eventually sticking the great big needles into people.
Clinical Research – Don’t dismiss this area. You can get a job as an entry level lab technician, for which basic clinical and phlebotomy skills can be very important.
Your stories
Anyone who has been on one of my courses has heard my story about how I got started as a phlebotomist. Now I’m leaving the comments open for other phlebotomists to share their stories, and hopefully our trainee phlebotomists can gain more inspiration.
If you’d have told me 10 years ago that I would have been a phlebotomist, I would have laughed in your face. I was working in social care, in staff development, standing in front of people, delivering presentations.
A friend, who ran a company with a small team of mobile phlebotomists, asked me if I could write a course for phlebotomists. What the hell do I know about phlebotomists? I went on a course, and, working with an experienced phlebotomist, I wrote a course.
I started to deliver this course, alongside the ‘real’ phleb, I’d lead the theory, and she would lead the practical. And obviously some of it sunk in. My friend asked me if I could start taking some bloods for him, which still wasn’t really anything I was interested in. But eventually he twisted my arm, for emergencies only. But I still wasn’t very confident, so I needed to gain more experience.
The phleb I trained with sorted it out for me to join her for a day in her GP surgery, which was an invaluable experience. And my Mum, who needed regular bloods, let me take her bloods. Through this my confidence and experience started to grow, and I had many interesting adventures in hospitals all over the country. There was once a 24 hr period where I completed 13 appointments and earned £1,820!! That was a good day.
When COVID came, my phlebotomy skills were in high demand, and far from doing a couple a week, I was now doing 4 or 5 appointments a day. And then I applied for the bank at the hospital, and I was doing 40-50 appointments a day!
From there, I never looked back. Once I was very reluctant, but now I love it. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.
I started my phlebotomy career when I was working for the Covid vaccination team, a nurse told me to try phlebotomy because she thought I would do well, however I enrolled in a introduction to phlebotomy course with Edd which was a excellent course, and a little while later I enrolled in the advanced phlebotomy course with Edd which again was a excellent course, I then did some community phlebotomy for a while, however I left that and went to work for my local health authority three days a week and I also do mobile phlebotomy for Edd and Angela and I have to say my journey into phlebotomy has been an incredible journey I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoy every day I’m working both as a static and a mobile phlebotomist very rewarding and a worthwhile job to do.
Thanks for sharing your story Tony. Out of interest, how did you go from the training to your first role in community phlebotomy?
Hiya, I’m Michael “MJ”
My journey to becoming a phlebotomist is a bit of a meandering one.
I was a Police Dog Handler in the Royal Air Force and during a particularly remote deployment I rightly flagged up The fact we did not have the enhanced skill-set to cope should a dog or dogs in my case go down. On top of that, there was nowhere in country or within four hours flying time to get to an Vet and you had a problem.
I eventually annoyed them enough that they gave me funding for a course in K9 critical care and I helped develop it with an Army Vet Surgeon. Part of that Care was taking blood doing IVs and various injections. As well as the usual bandages and the like. In 2016 these skills came to the fore, when I saved my dog life twice in three months. Firstly when he almost bled out on me and I stitched his leg up with a GP guiding me and secondly when he was poisoned by a Cane Toad. I correctly worked out that This was a Nerve Agent poisoning. I put an IV into him and also gave him atropine. Champ still lives with me to this day and is 12 this year..
When I came back, I volunteered in my spare time, on the East Midlands Army Responders scheme for six years and at the same time trained on frontline ambulances.
Due to being injured in the military I was then medically discharged so had to find another job. This led to working front-line paid and un-paid during Covid, where I also got utilise my mental health first Aid, suicide prevention and intervention training (ASIST) and TRIM (Trauma Risk Management) training. I found frontline quite heavy on my injuries (Left hip and groin, manual trucks and clutching constantly on blues), so I move across to doing shifts within the Ambulance reception over-flow area and Miami (Minor Injuries & Minor illnesses) at Leicester Royal (Another of Elite EMS’ contracts). This was a groundbreaking department which basically took patients from A&E who weren’t deathly ill and got them in and out in an average of 90 minutes (Down from 14hrs average previously). This included ECG’s and/or bloods, drugs and GP or clinician appointment. The entire team of frontline trained ambulance personnel and EGP’s really did make a huge difference (Not losing a single patient in the whole contract). Unfortunately, our contract wasn’t renewed due to cost and it was put back under NHS control. It promptly fell apart. I did however get to train in Bloods and IVs under 2 Advanced Care Practitioners (ACP’s) during the 14 months we were there with Elite EMS and this added to my other responsibilities such as ECG’s, bladder scans, Obs and clinical photos. The department was also for both children and adults so thismade for “Never a Dull day!!”, but I really enjoyed it.
We were literally doing scores of Bloods & IV’s a day, so you got to develop muscle memory. The department was almost always full too, 30 to 40 patients waiting constantly 12 hours a day. What kept us going, was morale and teamwork and being ex-military, that’s somewhere I thrived.
I can honestly say I miss Miami and the team there, as we all knew each other from frontline. We are all still keeping in touch now though!
After working there, I was horrified when I went to a GP Surgery and found it absolutely awful. There was no team ethos. They were not patient focused at all either, which I cannot abide. So I decided that it wasn’t for me. Having done some more phlebotomy and IV training through Edd, to allow me to work outside of the Elite EMS umbrella, I found the private work much more amenable to me, as well as allowing me to work around my injuries and medical appointments, etc.
Personally some tips, I would probably give you would be:
* A good mentor is worth their weight in gold! Luckily we have Edd!!
* Develop a system and stick to it. If you do it the same every time you can’t mess it up.
Always ID your patient. It sounds daft but if you’re doing more than one at a time you can easily send the wrong blood in the wrong label containers and that can cause carnage.
* If anyone is assisting you for example, say packaging the Bloods for you, make sure they know what they are doing, as I have caught it in the past where someone has been labelling the bag but not the containers/vials. – I always show the customer that I have done everything at each step so they can see it. That way if the lab tries to say something wasn’t done or hasn’t done, you can say no, I showed the patient I did it. Photographs help as well on the app (A great addition).
With nervous patients, if you get someone to rub the back of the opposite hand when you are doing the Bloods, it will confuse their brain and it will focus on that and not the needle. The brain can only deal with one side at a time so it works a treat. I use this quite often. The best compliment anyone can give you is, “ I barely felt that.”
Don’t be so focused on the needle that you are not aware of your surroundings. If the patient starts to have a vasovagal reaction, panics, or as I have even had myself their partner faint’s while you’re taking the patients blood, you need to be ready.
Other than that, a warm smile at the door will set you up for a very easy appointment.
People sometimes get anxious for no apparent reason and I saw this the other day with a patient when I took his blood pressure and it was a bit high so I spoke to him for a minute or 2 to distracted him and did it again and his blood pressure was back to normal. When I asked him after, if he felt a little bit anxious when the kit (ECG) had first gone on, he said “yeah I don’t know why either?” and I said “yeah, it’s normal.”
Put them at ease and it will be a doddle!
The last one seems a no brainer, but sometimes people get it wrong.
Always trust what you can feel more than what you can see when identifying a vein.
Don’t be afraid to ask a question of the group or jump on the chat feature if you’re in an appointment and something is going wrong or you aren’t sure. This company is so helpful and genuinely want to help so utilise it as much as possible if you need it.
Hope you all have a good journey as Phlebotomists and beyond.
I think you will find it very easy to work with Bloods & Beyond. I know I do!
Have fun!
MJ
People come into phlebotomy from all sorts of various backgrounds. Prior clinical experience is not a barrier to entry. I am a typical case in point.
I had a 20 year career in the Parachute Regiment followed by 20 years in international risk management both in security and Health and Safety and have worked in over 120 countries. The pandemic brought all that to an end, during which I worked as a NHS Covid-19 vaccinator at the Plymouth Mass Vaccination Centre, alongside Tony Olver.
Making use of a £300 NHS grant both Tony and I enrolled for the Bloods and Beyond basic phlebotomy course run by Edd in Feb 2023 and on his advanced phlebotomy course in May of that year.
Between courses I was fortunate to get a two week phlebotomy placement in a Torpoint GP surgery and was lucky to be supervised and coached by two experienced Band 5 nurses from the Mass Vaccination programme.
After Edd’s advanced course, which is a must as it finesses what is taught in the basic course, I worked as a Bank NHS community phlebotomist for 18 months as a lone worker in domestic, care home, nursing home, special needs home and retirement home settings.
In November 2023 I also began working three days a week at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital as a Bank phlebotomist in the mornings on the wards and a MLA (medical laboratory assistant) in the Blood Sciences pathology lab processing bloods in chemistry and haematology.
I am still at the RD&E. My day starts at 5am. I drive from Cornwall to Exeter and am in the phleb office by 7am prepping all the trollies for the morning’s shift. The other phlebs drift in over that hour. At 8am we bomb burst across the wards to do our designated 40 draws by midday. Usually it takes about 3.5 hours depending on degrees of difficulty. No one day is the same as we are in different combinations of wards each day, which keeps things interesting.
Ward work suits me: it’s solo work, relentless, no breaks or sitting down and most wards are cluttered with more tripping hazards and obstacles than a military assault course. So, I feel much more at home there than in outpatients or a GP’s surgery. I guess I do about 500 draws a month. Occasionally, I do some private phlebotomy for Bloods and Beyond, but I’m usually all phleb’d out.
My takeaways having done this for a couple of years now are:
1. A good knowledge of relevant anatomy is essential.
2. That said, while all houses have a boiler and plumbing, no two houses have identical plumbing. Humans are the same. Expect the unexpected.
3. Trust what you feel not what you see.
4. The single most important skill in phlebotomy is building rapport with the patient quickly and putting them at their ease.
5. Beware the gods of phlebotomy. If you think a draw is going to be easy, it won’t be. Make no assumptions.
6. The more you do the better you’ll get, specially at rapport-building.
7. Don’t take a failed draw personally. Accept it and let it go.
Phlebotomy is the hardest job I’ve done in five decades. It is the worst paid. But, paradoxically, it is the most rewarding. The patients keep you on your toes and venepuncture keeps your fine motor skills on point (pun intended). Anyone can do it.
All that endless bayonet practice thirty years ago has proved useful finally.
Who says you can’t teach old dogs new tricks?