Phlebotomy Technician Salary

When selecting a job you want to do, perhaps for the rest of your working life, there’s several factors you want to consider, to make sure it’s the right work for you. Of course, the income is very important, but you also must consider the job description, and whether or not it’s something you’d enjoy doing professionally.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering how wonderful the job of phlebotomy technician is, or probably you haven’t, but still it can be an interesting field. So what is a phlebotomist and what type of salary do they get?

Phlebotomy is a scientific term to designate people who draw blood from live people or animals. Basically, when you go out to give blood at a donor bank, or if you need to take some blood tests at an hospital, the people in a white coat who stick the syringe into your arm are typically these types of technicians. It can actually be much more challenging than it may appear.

To have a good blood test you need blood coming from the right vein, and if you don’t go for a vein, you won’t get anything. There are techniques to learn, and you need to know the human, or animal anatomy very well. Pets go through all the same types of tests, and they also need these technicians to help them. As far as wanting to do this type of work, obviously you need to be comfortable with blood, and with syringes, which is a big requirement.

Since that’s the most important part of your job, you can’t be squeamish about it. Also, since it is a medical profession, training to become a phlebotomy technician is somewhat involved. You may need to get a college degree, and then you typically go through an internship.

There’s many places you can work at, depending on your training. Of course, a blood bank is one, but a hospital is more likely, since they need to draw blood on many patients. Those who go to a veterinarian school can work on animals, and then they work in private clinics on pets.

There’s certifications that you can get, and certainly many employers require them, although in some cases, like for donor clinics, you don’t need to get one. As for the expected salary, well that depends who you work for, and how much education you received. You do work directly on patients, but it doesn’t require the same skills as a full on doctor, and certainly no where near the same training.

An entry level salary can be around $27,000, while an experienced worker may see a salary around $37,000. It will rarely go above that, since it’s a very simple, monotonous job. There isn’t much work skill to be learned past the basic training.

If blood is something that fascinates you, and working with syringes is second nature for you, perhaps being a phlebotomy technician is the right work for you. The salary certainly isn’t the best around, but the required training is low, and so is the job description.