They're So Vein: Tapping A Job Market

By Gabe Oppenheim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 14, 2008

There's the 60-year-old math teacher from India and the 34-year-old medical assistant from Eritrea. A 52-year-old Dodge car salesman who left New Orleans after Katrina, and a 32-year-old bank teller who cared for two parents until both died. A 26-year-old college grad. All trying their best to puncture and penetrate -- and, above all, to tap a source of life.

On this night in the milky white lab, students don blue scrubs for the first time. "Syringe draw!" announces instructor Shelly Chasteen, motioning the students to gather around as she extends her left arm. Another instructor in a backward baseball cap ties Chasteen's biceps with a tourniquet. He eyes a vein and strokes it, assessing its firmness. He doesn't want to rupture its walls. "What he's doing is called fishing," Chasteen tells the class.

And then he pierces her, plunging the 23-gauge needle of a plastic 3-cc syringe deep into her rich supply of cells. "Nice juicy red blooood," Chasteen coos, as her own trickles away. "Yum yum."

And 13 adults scurry to their stations, to begin practicing the art of phlebotomy.

On one another.

We hear a lot these days about classes like this, only we don't realize it. Politicians speak of unemployment and "low-skill work" that America lost, and the increasing number of openings in "growth industries." But rarely do they tender any details. What is a job of the future? How does one acquire skills for it? And where?

Answers may be writ in blood, on the stained counter of an adult education school. This phlebotomy class is at 17th and I streets NW, at Sanz College, which used to train government officials in foreign languages. Now it caters to those seeking a marketable skill in a rough market, who pass by the "No cash, please" sign in the reception area, past the bulletin board with the glittery blue words "First Step to a Better Future."

Since 1998, Sanz has offered medical courses, and since last December, due to increasing demand from local institutions, it has offered phlebotomy, or blood collection for medical tests. The word is derived from the Greek terms for "vein" and "cutting."

"We identified a market need of phlebotomists in the greater metropolitan area," says Ron Sandler, a corporate director at Sanz. "As our population in the country as a whole [gets] grayer and older, there's need for more and more testing as people get ill and need to get diagnosed."

Sanz students pay a little more than $1,900 for 92 hours of instruction in 12 weeks, during which they're supposed to complete 42 successful venipunctures. A 2005 survey showed that phlebotomists make an average of $11.74 an hour.

You want a peek into today's economy -- beyond the business pages and TV punditry? Don a lab coat and latex gloves and wade into the gooey coagulated world of stick and prick. Doctors base 70 to 80 percent of their decisions on lab tests, according to industry experts, and someone needs to administer them.

In the class, a trio of instructors weaves between pairs of students, prodding and shouting. "You guys are groovy!" Chasteen says, tousling one older man's white hair. "You're not a virgin no more!" she says to a woman who has just been pricked. Tsigereda Fikak, who moved to Illinois from Eritrea in 1997, sits nearby. She holds her breath in anticipation. "Oh, I'm dying," she moans.

"Yes," Chasteen says, with a chuckle, "it's gonna hurt."

"Oh, Lord."

And then, prick, it's over -- not with a bang but a whimper.

Instructors Chasteen, Bennett Fomen and Kesia Dixon call themselves the Caduceus Fans and threw a "tattoo party" in Largo a month ago at which they each got a little black caduceus -- the winged staff of Greek god Hermes wrapped in two snakes, a traditional symbol of medicine -- under the left ear. They say it's a sign of their earnest desire to help people take other people's blood.

"We don't do no oranges or food up in here," Dixon says of the difference between the Caduceus Fans' classes and lesser programs that promise to teach students everything in a single day, and then have them practice on fruit or dummies. "The dummies," Dixon says of this class, "are your peers."

Tanita Moore, 32, isn't even enrolled in tonight's class, but came to get a jump on Saturday's session. "I actually got stuck six times Saturday," says the bank teller and mother of two. "I was loving it." She promised her dying mother earlier this year that she'd enter this field, which she hopes will lead to nursing. "Somebody always dies and someone's always being born and somebody always gets sick," she says. And in today's economy, that line of reasoning may become infectious.

"I expect to see a lot more interest among people . . . who are looking for extra income to take the short road to a quality profession," says Dennis Ernst, the director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education in Ramsey, Ind., and publisher of Phlebotomy Today. Northern Virginia Community College has already filled its 16 phlebotomy spots for the fall semester.

In the front of the lab, Hayden Cochran, 52, faces a dangling skeleton. His partner, attempting a microcapillary collection on Cochran's middle finger, bends over and botches the poke with his metal lancet. Cochran's hand, pocked with holes, begins to spurt blood. "You're talkin' about surgery!" Chasteen cries.

Cochran just shrugs. "I've been shot at," he had announced earlier, noting his years in Harlem and the 3rd Ward in New Orleans.

Now he tries to soothe his partner, a man squinting through small gold-framed glasses. "You did fine, you did fine," Cochran says, still leaking blood onto a pink cloth. "You did great."

A former tennis instructor and car salesman, Cochran moved to Washington in February, following his ill mother. He enrolled in the course "because all the skills that I have I don't have certificates for." He's an imposing man -- he keeps popping the large latex gloves, prompting the instructors to call him "Big Daddy."

"I wanted a skill in an enclosed environment, in a growth field," he says. "The class is relatively short, the course is relatively inexpensive. . . . I'm told as you go up in continuing education courses, you can ask for money."

As it turns out, he gets the opportunity just an hour later, when a representative from Unity Health Care enters the class and says her company is hiring.

Students rush toward her, scribbling their numbers. But Cochran has a question: "How much do you start with?"

"It depends on your experience," says Unity's Tracie Washington, who attended Sanz herself. They go back and forth for a minute more, Cochran pushing for a figure and Washington demurring. Until finally he attempts a coup de grace.

"I'm very confident," he tells her. "Not cocky, but confident."