In 2015 my best friend suggested I go back to school to learn phlebotomy and/or medical assisting since I already worked some 15 years as office assistant in a dermatology office and schooling could help me move on to a better job. So we researched different trade-schools / training-programs. My friend had raised a few kids and knew what questions to ask and what to look for even though I would be an older student.
Hostos Community College told us that they had externships with live training for phlebotomy. But then my friend and I talked with an admissions director at Concord Rusam who GUARANTEED the right training.
Furthermore by this time I had entered an essay contest with Hostos and won a scholarship, so the training there would be paid for.
Concord's schooling would be paid for through a program called
"Workforce-1" so I had to choose between these two schools. My friend told me to choose Concord because Hostos' program was designed so that students only meet on Saturdays with a teacher and study the text book on their own mostly. Concord would have a teacher in class a few times a week. Concord's admissions director seemed trustworthy and made great promises. So I turned down Hostos' Helena Rubinstein Continuing Ed. scholarship. After enrolling at Concord and attending the first classes the admissions director then started telling me and my friend very opposite things from what he originally told us: That there won't be phlebotomy training on live people because of liability problems with that, not even on fellow students as some schools do, only a dummy arm. Other things were not made clear by the admissions director and there were setbacks. My friend told me that the admissions director apparently lied to us and/or was mentally unstable. One of the teachers could be very condescending toward the students and at one point when he handed us all a questionnaire to rate the school he actually told us that we should give a positive rating . He also said people past age 40 wouldn't be hired as phlebotomists.
It took longer than planned for me to get my certificate. I then found it harder to contact the admissions director to ask questions. Eventually other staff just told me that he was no longer at Concord so I have to talk with a different admissions director. There was some supposed issue according to Concord that I had to "qualify" for an internship by having the right work experience. (In retrospect it was strange that after I completed the course, I was told that I had to qualify for the internship). It took months of trying to communicate with the new admissions director to ask if my 15 years of dermatology-office experience was sufficient. Eventually Concord did tell me it was acceptable and sent me to an "internship" in a Yonker's medical office. The training was extremely meager, three days a week, usually no more than two hours each day, often less. I was not given a chance to do any significant phlebotomy procedures. I did vitals checks on people, not much else. The doctor and the nurse in the office were also neurotic, harsh and unprofessional at times. The doctor once pushed me aside physically when I was trying to do a blood draw on a patient, He said that I was not doing it right. After maybe four weeks the nurse told me that the doctor does not want me training there any more. The hours of internship originally promised by Concord were not fulfilled.
I should say that there were times in which different Concord staff tried to be helpful and were, but the entire school was ineffective and not being run the right way. Their CCMA is from the National Healthcareer Association, has no significance and not worth paying a yearly fee to keep it "current."
Alternately, a CMA (Certified Medical Assistant) from the American Association of Medical Assistants is the gold standard that employers really want . I contacted the American Association of Medical Assistants to ask if I could take their CMA test. They told me that Concord is not accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education or the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (and neither is Hostos). I could not try for the CMA.
I found this out some two years after finishing at Concord and researching more. I was surprised Concord did not explain this. With Hostos, if nothing else, I could have gotten some relevant phlebotomy training. To qualify for a phlebotomy job you would typically be asked if you did 180 needlesticks on live people. That is a standard in NYC. Other states may have different standards but there are stricter requirements for phlebotomy/medical assisting schools to train students. Workforce-1 stopped having anything to do with any Medical Assisting program sometime in 2016. I could not go to them for help regarding this and they would not communicate with any former client of theirs who got through a medical-assisting course through them.
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