How a Phlebotomist Certification Gives You a Competitive Edge

by Darwin on February 15, 2016

As a budding medical assistant working in allied health, the work you’ll perform will aid doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals in administering exceptional healthcare to the general public. Your responsibilities can include performing the clinical and administrative duties of the office and maintaining the efficiency of the staff and care of the patients.

 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that between now and 2024 the need for medical assistants will increase by as much as 23 percent, significantly faster than the national average of all occupations. Though the industry is growing, hospitals and clinics will want to diversify their staff. If a clinic is going to employ two medical assistants, they will hire two assistants with specialized training in different areas of allied health in order to provide better services and medical options to their patients.

 

Look at it this way: if a clinic is interviewing two potential candidates for one open medical assistant position, which candidate do you think they’ll hire, the medical assistant with specialized training in phlebotomy – or the other medical assistant, who, despite having some experience working in a clinic, doesn’t have any other training?

 

While experience is highly regarded, a person’s wide-ranging background and experience in different areas of the field will garner more attention, and if the skillset is sharp, that individual is more likely to be hired. As an allied health professional, you are helping your community implement healthy living with a can-do attitude.

 

How Does It Work?

A trained medical assistant with a phlebotomy background is readily able to do more for patient care in hospitals and clinics at large. Why? Because their specialty training can be used in other areas of the office, and can even expand the services a private doctor’s office provides its patients.

 

How many times has your primary care doctor made you travel between one clinic to another because their office didn’t have the services you required, or maybe the operating hours had too limited of hours?

 

Don’t these facilities realize people have jobs that keep them from making their appointments, or even setting up an appointment at all? As a trained medical assistant with a phlebotomist certification, you can offer your team a chance to expand their services and provide better patient coverage.

 

Training to become a medical assistant usually takes one to two years respectively to earn MA certification. Why do programs vary by as much as two years? Because your training time is based on whether you are earning a certificate or Associate’s degree, according to US College Search. In a MA program, students are taught medical terminology, office practices and medical law. Diagnostic and clinical procedures are taught in state-of-the-art labs, with courses including patient relations, accounting, record keeping and insurance processing.

 

In a MA phlebotomist certification program, like the program offered at Arizona College, you are given hands-on training by experienced professionals in state-of-the-art facilities. You’ll have the advantages of working in a modernized lab setting and drawing blood in lab simulations and on volunteers.

 

Are the Odds in My Favor?

When you take part in an MA phlebotomist program, you’ll be spending the same amount of time in school as you would if you weren’t getting the extra training at all. Time will pass the same no matter what, so why not enroll in a program that offers you training in two growing areas of allied health? BLS estimates that the rate at which the job market will grow for phlebotomists in the next decade will be 25 percent. Add that with the medical assisting percentage, and you have a growth rate of 48 percent! With those kind of numbers, you are ensured a job in the ever-evolving medical industry, where you have the chance to grow in your field and make a difference in someone’s life!

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