Be kind to your phlebotomist

One of the people with the most thankless job in the lab industry is the person drawing your blood. Why be nice to a person wielding a needle?  There are many reasons but primarily they are the people who process your blood and ensure they have a good specimen to give to the testing facility. Their jobs are not easy.

Somebody has to do it. Not everyone has a stomach for blood and sticking needles in people. The phlebotomist has training for drawing blood. They often go through a hospital training program or a community college training program. Usually most  are state or nationally certified to draw your blood.

Be Kind!

The phlebotomist doesn’t just draw blood anymore. There are many hats they are wearing outside of the hospital. They are front desk greeters, admission clerks, billing clerks, data entry operators, phone operators, document specialists, housekeepers, supply order and stockers. These are all part of the phlebotomist’s job. If you are dealing with a phlebotomist who works for your doctor’s office then you may be dealing with a person who does patient care for the doctor as well as all of the other duties.

When you arrive, the phlebotomist will take your insurance card and requisition and begin the registration process. A lab order prints out instructing the phlebotomist on what to draw and how to process it. Most of the time as the requisition prints there  will also be labels printing out. This ensures that the phlebotomist has the two identifiers on the label and labels are more legible than hand writing sometimes.

costly butterfly needle

Everybody has different veins and the phlebotomist has to be a quick study in order to find the perfect one for the collection. The most experienced phlebotomist can bruise an arm from time to time because our bodies are different everyday. Some days we are cold, some days we are hot which will make for different variations for the phlebotomist to work with. The phlebotomist also has to decide whether to use a regular needle in the needle holder or a butterfly. Although you know your own veins and some phlebotomists had to use a butterfly needle on you in the past does not mean this is true for every time you get your blood drawn.  Some phlebotomists have been doing this for years and are experienced. Let them decide which needle to use. The butterfly needle does not always produce the best specimen for a lab and can hemolyze your cells rendering the testing impossible with the instruments. Butterflies are also costly to the laboratory and drive insurance and ultimately your costs up.

Once your blood is collected the phlebotomist is responsible for labeling the tube and following several different protocols in order to get it to the lab correctly for testing. They will put at least two identifiers on the tube so that your tubes are labeled uniquely to you. They process each tube individually according to laboratory guidelines. For example if they have tubes called tiger tops (gray and red) the phlebotomist will let it clot then place it in the centrifuge for centrifugation all according to laboratory specifications. If the serum needs to be separated off they pour it off into a transport tube and label it with two identifiers and freeze it if need be. A laboratory identifier label called an accession label is then placed on your paperwork and each of the tubes so that everything is connected. Once the specimen is put in to the main data base, the tests are entered as well and the tubes are ready to be received in the lab. All of your lab will come back to that accession number and be delivered to the doctor through manual or electronics means.

The phlebotomist is a kind and caring individual that has a stomach for blood. We are lucky to have a group of individuals that are so well-trained and hard-working. We can rest assured our blood makes it safely to the lab for testing.