I'm in the phlebotomy course this spring and Wednesday was our second day of class. We were already starting to practice venipuncture and I was feeling pretty confident about it. Everyone else looked like they were doing pretty good if you consider how nervous we all were. I mean we were about to stick a needle in someone for the first time and take their blood.... Anyways, I get my partner and she's this little Asian lady, shes already hyperventilating, making weird noises and moving around. Great. So I do everything I'm supposed to:
-Apply tourniquet
-Find a good vein
-Take of tourniquet
-Sterilize area and let it dry
-Get tube, gauze and needle prepared
-Apply tourniquet again
-Anchor vein and 'slight poke' and go in
-Put test tube into other tube and observe if there's blood.
-Observe blood flow
-Remove tourniquet
So far so good but when it came to removing the tourniquet WHILE the needle was in her arm was when the problems started. The girl jumped back, as in moving her arm backwards, as in taking her arm away from the needle that was already in her arm, as in the needle that has the air vacuumed out of it to suck the blood out of your vein. So not only was the needle no longer in her arm, either was the blood that was now spilling out of her arm. To make matters worse the rest of the air that wasn't in the tube was being sucked in making a suctioning noise (which sounded horrible) So needless to say the little Asian lady almost passed out and I looked stupid. "Technically" it was a successful draw because I did find a vein, I did get blood in the vacutainer but as for the amount of blood it would have been a fail for the lab since they need a certain amount of blood for that certain color of tube because of the additives, blah blah blah.
Needless to say that I was pretty bummed I didn't do a perfect venipuncture draw my first time but it helps knowing that it wasn't all my fault. I was able to get blood my first try and that I'd rather have bad things like this happen in class than a bad thing happen to me while I'm out on my clinicals in front of patients and doctors.
