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Class act in Ohio expands pool of phlebotomists

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Amy Carpenter Aquino

December 2017—After two rounds of a new program to train high schoolers in phlebotomy, OhioHealth is seeing the fruits of its efforts. It has hired 19 of its trainees and a third course, set to begin next month, has 20 high school seniors enrolled.

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Just when OhioHealth’s phlebotomy staffing needs were expanding, laboratory services leaders were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the training students were receiving at most of the phlebotomy programs in the Columbus area.

“We were really only hiring phlebotomists from one of the programs because we didn’t feel the other programs were giving these students enough hands-on training,” says Marci H. Dop, OhioHealth system vice president for laboratory services.

OhioHealth’s ongoing draw site expansion, and competition for phlebotomists with national laboratories and Ohio State University Hospital, further depleted the supply of qualified phlebotomist candidates.

“We were all fighting for the same pool of phlebotomists, and somebody would raise their salary 50 cents and we would lose them,” Dop says.

In 2015, the Delaware Area Career Center reached out to OhioHealth to discuss a partnership that would add phlebotomy to the DACC’s established two-year health technology program for high school juniors and seniors. (The DACC’s college prep program prepares high school students for medical and health-related careers that require post-secondary education.)

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