They're So Vein: Tapping A Job Market

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.