Do you do venipunctures as a nurse?

[CassB]

I have my BSN and have been out of school for a year and a half now. Since graduation, I have worked in the psychiatric field which I love! I recently started working for a home health agency doing visits for psych patients. During the orientation, I had to complete a skills lab. One of the skills I had to complete was drawing blood. I was never taught how to do this during nursing school and have never had to complete this task in either clinicals or on the job. My hospital has a phlebotomist come in for all the blood draws. Regardless, drawing blood is not that difficult of a task and I was able to get it right on the first try. What bothered me was the comment from the lady leading the skills lab saying how it was "scary" when I mentioned I had never done one before. This nurse is probably double my age, so nursing school is probably quite different from when she went. I was just wondering if any other recent grads did this during nursing school. I don't think my school taught it because 1) the majority of hospitals have their own lab people for blood draws and 2) if you can do an IV, a blood draw should be no problem. I was just a little offended by her comment and the possibility that she may have thought I was incompetent simply for never having done a venipuncture. In the end, it doesn't really matter because I was able to do it easily...but it just sparked my curiosity as to what other nurses have done. :)

[nurse.sandi]

I was never taught to insert an iv or do a blood stick in school. I even inquired and one of my instructors told me I would learn it on the job. I can agree that you probably did not have to do that in psych. Also, I was used to having a phleb. but on the last unit, the pcas and the nurses did draws. I think each institution is different.

As far as the comment made, I apologize for an educator making that comment. I think it was inappropriate esp. if it was in front of your peers. If that was said to me I would not be happy either.

Glad you did it....good luck.

[PMFB-RN, RN]

I am an instructor in my hospital's Nurse Residency Program. We do not teach either IVs or venipuncture, other than a brief demonstration of the types of needels and equipment our hospital uses. Our new grads are expected to be able to do very basic nursing tasks. The vast majority of our new grads did both in school and clinical. The only one's I can remeber who didn't came from a direct entry masters program, but I don't think my hospitals will be hiring any more of those.

[battymom]

I am in my second semester of nursing school (ASN) & that was one of the first things they taught us at the start of the semester. Both how to start an IV and how to do venipuncture. I haven't had the chance in clinical's to draw blood but I have already had the chance to start a couple IV's. It's not a hard skill to learn, I wish I could say I can't believe an instructor would make a comment like that to you but I have an instructor who is quick to look down on you if you were not born with a complete knowledge of nursing skills.

Good Luck!

[ParvulusPuella]

We were not taught how to do either in nursing school(ADN); we were told that if we needed to know how, we would learn on the job. Heck, we were only allowed to do fingersticks for blood glucose at one clinical site, all of the others had strict policies regarding who could do it (special blood borne pathogen training required that was pointless for us to do for our 5 week rotations). Luckily, it seems to be the same for most of the schools in the area. I think none of us new grads who started last summer at my hospital had been taught, so we spent a day in orientation practicing on the arms.

[Bobbkat]

I was taught how to do IV's in nursing school, but not venipuncture. I think the rationale was that if you could start an IV, you could do venipuncture as well.

I do venipuncture on my unit. I'm in the NICU, and we don't have an IV team or phlebotomist's. If I have trouble getting a stick on a patient, I just ask another nurse.

[2011NursingStudent]

I've been on the fence about spending the additional $$ for a phlebotomy course, and I may for this exact reason....

[Whispera, MSN, RN]

I graduated with my BSN in 1992. We were not taught how to do IV starts or blood draws. I asked about it and was told that if the skills were needed, we would learn them on the job. As it turned out, everywhere I've worked, there's been an IV team and a phlebotomist handy, and I never had to learn the skills, and didn't need them. Most of my work was in psych, and we had lots of blood draws. I also worked med/surg.

Maybe these days there's a swing back to learning these things in nursing school, but back then, it wasn't seen as necessary where I went to school.

[jnrsmommy]

I graduated from my LVN program in 02 and part of our cirriculum was IV therapy, and we had to be IV certified to graduate. I have worked places with and without IV teams and labs. I currently work in a skilled rehab setting, and I start LOTS of IVs and have drawn blood on pts while waiting for the outside lab to get there.

Something I have found interesting is different labs (that I have encountered) have different orders in which the tubes are drawn. I've always made sure that when dealing w/ a new lab, I find out what their policy is on that.

[mindlor]

A little baffled here,

Starting IV's is a foundational skill for an RN working in a hospital or outpatient surgery center?

What the heck?

[JSlovex2]

i've said this before in another thread - i personally think nurses should know how to do and be able to do any and everything that they are able to delegate. we have a lab where i work, but if the phlebotomist (or CNAs who are certified for blood draws) were unable to draw blood they would go by the natural chain of command and ask the next person "higher up" which would be the nurse. i don't think anyone should be delegating tasks they aren't able to perform whether it be drawing blood or making a pizza.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

I completed an LVN program in 2005 and an ADN-RN program last year, and I did not learn about IV starts or venipuncture (blood draws) during my time in either school.

As far as IV starts are concerned, I have had to learn it through baptism by fire. I have never had to draw blood because the lab has always performed venipunctures. The only times that I've ever drawn blood is through a PICC line. However, I've never stuck a person's veins to draw a sample of blood.