Are you a health science instructor looking to increase student success on the NHA Phlebotomy certification (CPT)? At Careerline Tech Center, Michigan, two teachers have found a way help students pass at exceptional rates.
At Careerline, Julie Cardenas and Renee Slagter prepare their students for a variety of certifications, including Medical Administrative Office Assistant, Phlebotomy, and Certified Medical Assistant. Because they are preparing students for the workforce, finding a resource that is constantly up-to-date with industry and national standards was very important to the instructors.
The instructors use the HealthCenter21 eLearning curriculum to prepare their students for the NHA Phlebotomy Certification. What are their pass rates? In 2014, they had a 100% pass rate.
Preparing Students for the NHA Phlebotomy Certification
Slagter teaches Advanced Health Care and Cardenas teaches Healthcare Foundations. Between the two of them, students are being prepared for several certifications, including Medical Administrative Office Assistant, Phlebotomy, and Certified Medical Assistant.
For Phlebotomy, they cover the Anatomy and Physiology body systems content over the course of the school year. They use HealthCenter21 as a supplement. Throughout the whole year as they cover a body system, students have two week periods of time to complete the coordinating HealthCenter21 unit online, including taking the automatically graded quiz. Those grades are recorded and calculated into their course grades.
“After they're done at the end of the year, then we'll do a review for the Phlebotomy chapter. So it basically is them reviewing through the whole year, through these body systems, and then taking the test for phlebotomy at the end of the year,” Cardenas explains.
Slagter shared how the students in the program have been doing:
“We're with the NHA, the National Health Career Association. We have done the Phlebotomy certification for two years. I taught that in the Advanced Program, and we're at 100% pass rate.”
How HealthCenter21 Meets the Varying Needs of the Health Science Classroom
Careerline started with HealthCenter21 when their programs merged to become a more generalized health program. The administration wanted teachers to create a broader categorized program with a lot of college credit. Slagter shared:
“We were taking a look at what kind of curriculum we could give to our students. We looked at what everyone's using, the Diversified Health Occupations textbook. It was so dry and boring. We saw HealthCenter21 at one of your conferences. We thought, wow, this is interactive. It has the supplemental materials provided.
It has lesson plans. It has additional things that we could use to make it a blended learning environment. Students can do some online, and we could do some in class. It wasn't all just about being on the Internet, and it wasn't all about being in a book.”
HealthCenter21 has been a big help with the diverse student abilities seen at Careerline. Slagter explained that they haven’t had to spend much time to accommodate for students with different abilities. Cardenas adds, “It also helped with the students who had learning disabilities and IEPs, where you're able to have someone read the information to you. That was very helpful, and I think they do well on those programs.”
Since required health care topics change both due to educational and industry standards changing, having a curriculum that stays up to date is imperative. With HealthCenter21, the instructors don't need to worry about checking to ensure content is current. As Slagter explained:
"We appreciate that the content in HealthCenter21 is updated regularly and changed to keep current. We've noticed that about the progam."
How to Use HealthCenter21 Effectively
When they first started using HealthCenter21 in the classroom, the teachers admitted they were a little “HealthCenter21 happy” and used it too much. Now that they have found the right balance, it’s the perfect tool for them and their students. Slagter explained:
“We figured out what the students could handle, what we could teach in the classroom. We figured out the activities that we could use in the classroom and how we could teach that segment without necessarily having them go through the module. They’d still take the quizzes, but they didn't necessarily have to go through every single page of every single module to do well on them.
So we really did make it an integrated curriculum instead of having them have to do every single module on the computer.”
They see HealthCenter21 as another ‘teacher’ in the classroom to help with instruction and break up class time. Slagter says,
“What I found is that students don't always want to hear me. So it was nice to have another ‘teacher’ that did things differently and maybe explained things differently. When I came through and did the in-class assignment and the in-class activity, the way I taught it was just enough different from the online module.
I touched those students who didn't learn it on the module, and the students who didn't learn it for me, the modules gave them a secondary way of learning the content. That's what I really appreciated about it. It just gave them that extra type of learning.”
