NHA Certified Phlebotomy Technician (CPT) Exam
There is no single phlebotomy certification. This site takes the NHA Certified Phlebotomy Technician exam as its blueprint: 100 scored items plus 20 unscored pretest items in two hours, across five domains whose item counts are also their percentages. The ASCP Phlebotomy Technician credential is a different exam with different eligibility and is covered on its own comparison page.
Content outline and weights
| Content area | Weight | Study |
|---|---|---|
| Safety and Compliance | 26% | Practice |
| Patient Preparation | 20% | Practice |
| Routine Blood Collections | 28% | Practice |
| Special Collections | 12% | Practice |
| Processing | 14% | Practice |
Passing: NHA does not publish the CPT passing score in the test plan, and this site does not state one. Confirm the current passing standard with NHA directly before you test. (National Healthcareer Association (NHA))
The choice this site makes, stated plainly
Phlebotomy has several certifying bodies, and they do not share an exam. Blending them produces pages that are wrong for everybody, so this site picks one and says so.
The blueprint here is the NHA Certified Phlebotomy Technician (CPT) exam. Every domain weight, item count and task statement on this site comes from NHA's published CPT Test Plan.
The ASCP Board of Certification Phlebotomy Technician, PBT(ASCP), is a different credential from a different body with different eligibility routes and its own content outline. It has its own page here, and nothing on that page is mixed into the NHA blueprint.
If your employer or your state has told you which credential they want, follow that. If you have a choice, read the comparison page before you start studying, because the eligibility routes differ far more than the content does.
The NHA CPT format
- 100 scored items, plus 20 pretest items that are not identified and do not count.
- So you answer 120 items in an exam time of 2 hours.
- Because there are exactly 100 scored items, each domain's item count is also its percentage.
The test plan is based on a job analysis completed in 2024.
The five domains
| Domain | Items | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Routine Blood Collections | 28 | 28% |
| Safety and Compliance | 26 | 26% |
| Patient Preparation | 20 | 20% |
| Processing | 14 | 14% |
| Special Collections | 12 | 12% |
| Total | 100 | 100% |
Routine Blood Collections and Safety and Compliance are 54 of the 100 items between them. Special Collections, the domain candidates most often worry about, is 12.
Core Knowledge
The test plan carries a separate Core Knowledge block that is not a domain of its own. NHA describes it as knowledge that "could be used in the context of an assessment item" anywhere on the exam: blood components and blood group systems, cardiovascular anatomy, phlebotomy-related vascular anatomy such as the antecubital fossa, hemostasis and coagulation, the impact of pre-analytical errors on results, aseptic technique, standard precautions, the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act, HIPAA, the Patient Bill of Rights, communication, and professionalism.
Treat it as assumed background rather than a fifth of the exam to revise separately.
What we do not state
The passing score. NHA's test plan does not publish one, so this site does not invent one. Confirm the current standard with NHA before you test.
Exam guides
- NHA CPT and ASCP PBT compared, without mixing them up
The NHA Certified Phlebotomy Technician and the ASCP Board of Certification Phlebotomy Technician are separate credentials from separate bodies, with separate content outlines, eligibility rules and fees. This page states only what each body publishes about its own exam, and is explicit about the ASCP figures this site could not verify and therefore does not state.
- What the NHA CPT test plan actually requires you to be able to do
NHA's CPT test plan is written as task statements and knowledge statements rather than topics, which tells you how the exam is built. Task statements are the duties you must be able to perform; knowledge statements are what you must know to support them. Items can test either one or both, and Core Knowledge statements can appear in support of any domain.
20 original questions, weighted like the real blueprint. No signup. Results in minutes.
Primary references
- NHA Certified Phlebotomy Technician (CPT) — Test Plan for the CPT Exam — National Healthcareer Association (NHA) · primary · retrieved 2026-09-22, verified 2026-09-22
- PBT — Phlebotomy Technician — American Society for Clinical Pathology Board of Certification (ASCP BOC) · primary · retrieved 2026-09-22, verified 2026-09-22
- Order of Blood Draw Tubes and Additives — Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) · primary · retrieved 2026-09-22, verified 2026-09-22