New Website, Newsletter, Dublin and Manchester

After a nearly a year of planning waiting, watching and working our new website went live in the first half January – its not quite all there yet as we have a new booking system to come but it is up and running and I am really pleased with it – I hope it is simpler to find your way around and you can now download course outlines, funding information and a DWP funding form which I hope makes thing easier for everyone.

Click here to have a look and see what you think

After a bit of a performance (Andrew nearly got us banned from using the system but that is another story) my main man for graphic design and marketing Ian Bousfield of IS Designs got our January newsletter sent out on Thursday morning, backed up with some pretty amazing analytical software

Jack and Andrew wasted the entire day watching the software work saying things like

“Look someone has opened it in Antigua”

or

“Someone has just opened it in Florida ”

or

“There that’s someone in Aukland and they have just clicked through to the website”

emails opened all over the world

Katherine was much more sensible (and so was I) but I couldn’t believe that PTS was sending emails out and having them read all over the world.

To see the newsletter yourself click here

Since my last post I have been across to Dublin again – I love the city but I don’t get much chance to see it really.

My trip tends to be drive to Holyhead – ferry (hopefully smooth) – go to the hotel, teach, sleep, teach again, catch the ferry back (again hopefully smooth) and drive home . A rough crossing wouldn’t worry me but my better half is a far from good sailor and he gets…….. grumpy……if it is rough.

The people in Ireland and lovely and I really enjoy teaching there, but then again I enjoy teaching anywhere.

We hold our Manchester courses in Media City at Salford Quays and we have been going there for a while now but it has changed an awful lot. Now the BBC have moved in it has gone from being a bit of a building site to a bustling busy place. It really is starting to be a media hub and there is always something going on and someone usually sees a person that they recognise from TV.

I’ll try and blog again before to long

Well that was 2011

We have been very busy and the year passed before I got round to telling you what has been going on!!

We have had an interesting time!!

Chris, Sue, Julie and Jason, and Michelle have moved on and we wish them all the best, but Andrew, Adam, Jayne and Sid, Katherine and Alecia have joined us,

I am pleased to say that Mass and Max are still teaching for us in London and becoming more and more popular.

We are continuing to run courses all over the country, with Jayne and Sid working across the Midlands and Adam working primarily in the North.

I am particularly looking forward to going down the South West for the first time – we are going on tour to Bristol, Plymouth and Southampton and doing three courses on consecutive weekends without coming back up to Northallerton

We’ll have a car full of equipment when we set off on our trip – that is for sure!

We have been back to Scotland and across to Dublin several times where we have met Samantha and reconnected with Jackie, an old friend of Andrew’s, and we are looking forward to working with them in 2012.

During 2011 we have been getting more and more involved in teaching phlebotomy in universities which is very exciting.

We were delighted that Katherine won the Star Radio apprentice of the year award in November and we had a great evening out at the ceremony.

Just after that we started our new venture – the opportunity for people who have completed our training to take blood from real patients in a doctor’s surgery. The first three Clinics in Darlington have been a success and we are establishing centres in Sheffield and Birmingham with more to come as 2012 develops.

Jack our business co-ordinator started taking blood for real last Friday and I think he may have caught the phlebotomy “bug”.

Best wishes for 2012 and I’ll try really hard to blog more regularly

The power of video

Where on earth did April go?  I can’t believe it’s already May, I’m so behind on my blogging, sorry for not keeping you in the loop!

As with most months, April was a really exciting month for us, but it was also a month for trying out some new things.  Something I’ve really wanted to do since I started the business was create some promotional video footage of our courses, and last month, we got the process underway.

After meeting Chris from creativefilming at a local business meeting, he came along to our Advanced Phlebotomy course in Birmingham to film me, the course as a whole, and testimonials from the students.

Even though I knew this was something I’d always wanted the business to do, I was really nervous about being filmed.  I was conscious of the camera and worried about the end result, but I needn’t have been.  Chris was tactful and just sunk into the background as I taught the course.  He and the camera ended up just being another pair of eyes, and another pair of ears to teach.

I was also a bit worried because it’s a long time since I have been critiqued during teaching, and along with being a promotional tool for the company, the video footage has given me the opportunity to examine my teaching methods, and improve them.  I believe that there is always room for improvement, and this is a different way for me to learn and gives me the chance to see what I can do better.

We started the process with the Advanced course, but we’ve got much bigger plans for our video empire.  We intend to do a similar video for the basic course, but then we hope to take these to another level, and create mini-tutorial videos exploring site selection, and tourniquet use, amongst other things, to pop on the website.

The video can be found on our website and also on our YouTube channel, so check it out, and let me know what you think!

The start of this month saw me celebrate my birthday with my family for a day at the Seaside.  I really love my job, but it was really nice to take a step back, and get away with Andrew, my daughters, their partners, and of course my Grandson.

But the rest didn’t last long.  On Saturday the 6th I spent the day in Berkshire, teaching a new aspect of our courses.  We were approached for training on obtaining bloods from the hands and feet, and though this is covered in the Advanced Course, it wasn’t covered to the extent required.  Never one to shirk a challenge, I wrote new course materials to teach this aspect of phlebotomy and it was a learning curve for me too.  All of this material will affect our Basic Course as we continue to develop that further over the coming months.

Along with creating the new course materials, the company I was working with asked me to come up with a range of protocols for them, to explore why you should and shouldn’t take bloods from hands, what the consequences and contraindications can be, and how to select a site.  Writing protocols is something I quite enjoy; I know it sounds silly, but I enjoy creating safe and comprehensive procedures that an individual can follow, so I know they’re doing everything right and in the best interests for them and their patients.

So you can see why my blogging presence wasn’t quite as I would have liked over the past few weeks.  This month is no different, I’m in London at the weekend, teaching in Stratford, at our newer East London venue, but despite still being busy, I’ll try to check back a bit more regularly.

Busy being busy…

As with most weeks (especially ones that turn into fortnights!), this one has just gone too quickly!  I’ve been so busy with work and looking after my grandson, I’ve barely had time to think, let alone write about anything, but here I am at last.

Last week I was back down in London again to teach my basic course.  After the success of the previous weeks training, I was really excited about this course.  Despite the fact I love teaching, I sometimes find the travelling difficult, and the novelty of staying in hotels soon wears off.

But that aside, I love what I do, and I wasn’t disappointed with the course.  The learners were enthusiastic, excited to be learning about phlebotomy, and they all absorbed every bit of information I gave them.  And to me that’s what teaching is about – there’s nothing nicer than passing on something you know, especially to someone so eager to take in whatever you’re teaching.  It sounds cliched, but for me as a teacher, there’s nothing nicer than seeing my students do well, and knowing that they’re going on to be brilliant phlebotomists.

Last Sunday (20th) saw myself and Andrew head to York (just a short journey!) to teach the advanced course, and we had a great day.  The advanced course covers a range of things that the basic course doesn’t – we get into cannulation, using a butterfly needle, and taking bloods from the hand, amongst other things!

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week saw me train up two new tutors Noura and Adam, and get all of my staff get together for a couple of training days.  I like to get everyone together every six months or so to go over what they already know, make sure they’re comfortable with what they’re doing when they are teaching or assisting with the technical side of things, and just to make sure that they’re all happy with their work.

Looking after my staff is just as important to me as ensuring I send the best phlebotomists out into the world.  As well as that though, a huge part of our accreditation with the Open College Network is ensuring that all of our training is standardised and our regular meetings mean that we keep those protocols of standardisation fresh in our minds, so we can all teach the same course to the same high level.

Our USP is the fact that we are accredited by an educational body.  When I initally applied for the accreditation from the OCN, I knew that standardisation was important, but it wasn’t such an issue when I was a one man band.  I knew that I taught every course exactly the same, every time I did it.  But as I began to take on more tutors, it became more imperative to have a structured, formalised training schedule in place for my staff to make sure that we were giving every student the same tools to enter the workplace.

If you’ve completed our basic course, you’ll know that we ask you all to complete a course evaluation, and this is one of the many tools we use for this training.  The evaluation highlights any areas where we, as a team, need to sharpen up our training.  I’ve been teaching for years now, but there is always chance to improve, and the evaluations help me to learn as much as they help me to train the tutors.

We’ve also been tweaking the lesson plans recently, and every tutor is now familiar with this, and we’re rolling it out across every single course that we teach.  This means that I know every course is taught to the same high standard, and our students know that whichever course they go on, it’s going to be taught to the highest possible standard, and that in turn means that we keep that unique accreditation from the OCN.

On Friday, my husband acted as the auctioneer for a former student of ours who is involved in fundraising for Muscular Dystrophy.  There are 10 ‘warriors’ who are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in September and our former student Justin will be walking 150 miles across the Saharan desert in the ‘Marathon des Sables’ from Thursday.  It was lovely watching my husband doing what he’s passionate about, but he’s been struck by a bit of a virus this last week, so he was a bit hoarse!  It’s a great cause and it was brilliant to be involved and support one of our former students in such a challenge.  If you want to see how you can help, or learn more about the challenges, you can visit www.drjustinroberts.co.uk.

This week holds business as usual, with a well needed weekend at home for myself and most of my tutors.  Unusually, there’s just one course running this weekend, but it’s a sell out in London with Sue and Massimo.  If you’re going, I hope you have a great time, and good luck!  Feel free to let us know at the office how you get on!

“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”

I’ve been thinking about starting up a blog for quite some time, and at last, I’ve finally got round to it.  I suppose first of all, I should introduce myself, and tell you a bit about who I am, what I do and what I hope to achieve.

First of all, I’m Alison Purkiss.  I’m a businesswoman, a wife, a mother and the founder of Phlebotomy Training Services Ltd.  I set up my company back in 2007, after an unusual turn of events forced me into having a career change.  I’d done all sorts in my past, I’d worked at a solicitors, a leisure centre, I’d been an exercise teacher, and I’d been a phlebotomist, to name just a few, but a change of circumstances meant I had to reassess what I was doing.

And that’s how PTS came about.  I had loved my phlebotomy job, and I had loved being a teacher, and I was very aware that there was no formal training for phlebotomists in the UK.  I had been very fortunate when I was trained, and I was shown what to do, taught effectively and I had no fears that I was competent to begin the job, but I knew that not everyone was receiving training to the same standard that I had, and it suddenly occurred to me that I could create a training course, get it backed by an accrediting body, and create one of the very first formal qualifications for phlebotomy in the UK.

So I did it, and that’s how I ended up where I am today.  I started out solo, working from home, training on weekends, and taking control of the administration in the week.  That was in 2007, and now, in 2011, I have five other tutors working alongside me, and a whole range of other support staff working behind the scenes.  Since the company started, we’ve trained over 3,500 people, and I never expected for it to work this well.

But where do we go next?  What can I do now?  I want to change the way phlebotomy is seen in the UK.  I want phlebotomists to be respected for what they do, and I want to make sure that everyone who takes blood is trained to the highest possible standard.  That’s my next mission.

And this blog is going to follow me on this mission.  It’s a way for me to tell everyone who’s been on our courses what’s going on in the world of Phlebotomy, the world of Phlebotomy Training Services, and everything else in between.

Right now though, I’ve got to make a move.  I returned from London yesterday, from a brilliant course, and tomorrow I’m heading to York to teach our advanced course.  I’ll report back on those after I’ve had some sleep on Sunday!

PS – Thanks to Chekhov for his lovely quote, I think it’s perfect for this blog?  It’s definitely how I feel about the knowledge I have of phlebotomy, that’s why I love to share what I know!