drawing blood

[KayDubb]

Ive been an LPN almost a year now. I recently switched jobs from a nursing home to a Dr's office. At my new job Im required to draw blood. I didnt even go over this in school...and in the nursing home they had a lab to come in and do it. Long story short...Im doing it...but I still dont feel I have the education I should have. If someone could pls explain some safety issues for me. Im terrified of getting stuck. We only use retractable butterfly needles. Are you supposed to retract the the needle after removing the tournequet and while its still in the arm? or do you pull it out and then do it? Pls anyone who can give me ANY safety hints, I would so appreciate it.

[vampiregirl, BSN, RN]

There are so many types of "safety" angiocaths available today... it is part of being familiar with your equipment to know when to initiate the safety feature. If there's not an insert w/ the angios, usually the manufacturers website offers instructions.

[gymnut]

Here is a phlebotomy study pamphlet that I got off of Amazon that has really helped me. http://tinyurl.com/3nuxupb.

I work on an oncology floor and all we use is the butterfly needles. I love them and find the straight needle to just be such a pain to work with. After I'm done collecting I remove the tourniquet, place a piece of gauze right over the needle while it's still in the vein and then just retract the needle out of the vein. I never had any issues with hematomas or blood running from the site.

I think that is the safest way to do it because one tech use to remove the needle from the patient and then retract it however one time the patient moved his arm to quickly after she removed it and was stabbed by the needle.

[KayDubb]

the butterflies ive been using have the push button on it. there would be no way you could put it in bevel down because it would retract as soon as it hit the pt's arm. Sometimes they retract just from me opening the package. I do good on everything else as far as finding the vein, venipuncture, order of draw...I just have trouble with removing the turnoquet and needle. seems like the pt's always get jumpy at that point. I did figure out that I was tieing the turnoquet wrong with too much of the rubber sticking down making it hard to release. Thanks to all for the helpful hints.