Yesterday at work one of the hospital phlebotomists
was called to the ER/clinic that I work in to do a
STAT draw. After the phleb. collected her tubes and left
one of the LPNs pulled me aside. She was within earshot of my conversation w/ the phleb. and asked me what "ORDER OF DRAW" meant! I was stunned. I got an
MA reference book out that I keep at the nurses station and showed her. She had no knowledge of this.
She is a seasoned 10 year LPN who I admire greatly.
But this blew me away!! Has anyone else had any other similiar situations? Just wondering.

Your Professional Title/Credentials: Certified Clinical Medical Assistant

Are You Still In School? no

Are You Working? yes. Hospital ER/Clinic

I am in nursing school, although I know "order of draw" because I went to MA school, no one else in my class does....RNS and LVNs are not taught specifically how to draw blood because they do not do this in the hospitals...there are phlebotimist to do this.

Your Professional Title/Credentials: CCMA-C

Are You Still In School? Nursing School

Are You Working? Doing free doula service

Thanks, that helped. The LPN joked she learned something new! Of course I learn many new things from her each day. Made me feel good about my education;
especially when she passed it on to the other nurse!

Your Professional Title/Credentials: Certified Clinical Medical Assistant

Are You Still In School? no

Are You Working? yes. Hospital ER/Clinic

IMO it is need to know. Most don't need to know so why clutter up the brain with that.

My other half is an RN the only reason she knows order of draw is they do labs on pts. on a regular basis, and techs or phlebs are not always available. So the RNs need to know order of draw to do the job. Before this she job she didn't need to know. They do order of draw a little differently, than we were taught, where she works.

Your Professional Title/Credentials: SMA

Are You Still In School? yes

Are You Working? no

If anyone is drawing blood,they NEED to know the order of draw. Otherwise they could easily mess up the results of a specimen,especially when it comes to a protime. In the MA class I was in it was never really taught. The rest didn't "get it" and the importance wasn't reinforced. So all these students went out into their externships just guessing at it. Same goes for vein selection. They had no idea the names and placements of the main arm veins and would just jab at whatever felt right. This is very typical of the average medical assisting class. I have met working MAs who claimed they were taught "phlebotomy" and yet when I asked if they know the names of the veins in the arm they go "Well,no".

They don't teach it in nursing school. We aren't even taught phlebotomy, only Iv starts. Rarely do we draw blood at a hospital, we have lab techs that do it. If anything we draw ABG's or draw off of central lines. There is a chart by the phlebotomy tray to reference to though.

Your Professional Title/Credentials: RN

Are You Still In School? No

Are You Working? Yes

What is the order of draw anyways? Lets say you had all the tubes in from of you , what would come first?

Go to the top of this page,click on "Phlebotomy Pages" and go to "New Order of Draw". If you have not been taught a saying to memorize the basic tubes,then make one up. Take the first letter of each tube,etc. Remember that they are-

Blood Cultures-light yellow top(rarely done)
Plain(no additives)-red top,used in blood banking

Citrate -light blue top,used for protimes
SST(serum separaters)-sometimes red top:READ THE LABEL
Heparin-green top,depending
EDTA-purple top,used in hematology
Oxalte-grey top,used in glucose screenings

If you are going to be drawing blood,you need to study the tubes,the various colors,what they have in them and what the additive performs,what tests they go to, and so on. That is what phlebotomy is all about.

so if you had to draw up two tubes, and were not told, you do the purple then the gray??

and If you had an SST, Purple, and a Gray you would draw it in that order? Red,Purple, then Gray last?



P.S
Is it grey or gray?
I have read it both ways!

Are You Still In School? y

Are You Working? n