Home >> Tag Archives: Phlebotomy (see also Blood/coagulation/hematology)

Tag Archives: Phlebotomy (see also Blood/coagulation/hematology)

Disruptive technologies—what impact on lab workflow?

September 2023—New from CAP Publications is Disruptive Technologies in Clinical Medicine, by Frederick Kiechle, MD, PhD. In his new book Dr. Kiechle says “disruptive technologies offer new paradigms in diagnostic medicine.” Technology-driven disruptions are stimulated by the need to improve patient care, he writes, and they have been “a feature of the practice of clinical pathology since the inception of the first clinical laboratory in 1895 at the University of Pennsylvania, the William Pepper Laboratory.”

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For those who want it easy, blood draws anywhere

March 2023—The need was always there for some. For others, it’s a matter of convenience. “Home phlebotomy as a concierge service” is how Michael Eller describes what went live in 2019 in New York at Northwell Health, where he is assistant vice president of business development for its laboratories. “It was just a matter of using the capacity we already had in the field and hiring appropriately as needed,” he says.

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U.S. blood supply steadier but still short

August 2022—Blood is a precious resource and shouldn’t be treated as a commodity. That’s the consensus in the blood banking community, in line with a longstanding conviction that volunteer donations should remain at the blood system’s core. But as the worst of the pandemic appears to have passed, discussion of blood shortages has increasingly drawn on the vocabulary of commerce, and the warnings about the blood supply have been rife with references to supply chain problems that go beyond the need for more donations. Crises in the blood supply are nothing new, and while the health care system strives to stay prepared, the pandemic threw novel commercial and logistical factors into the mix, in some ways jumbling the expected order of a crisis for blood services. Hospitals scrambled to cope with a surge of COVID-19 patients while the spread of infection caused thousands of blood drives to be canceled, so there was a steep drop in supply of blood products, says Pampee Young, MD, PhD, chief medical officer, biomedical services, American Red Cross.

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Transgender care, in and beyond the lab

July 2022—Gabrielle Winston-McPherson, PhD, could be talking about almost any aspect of laboratory medicine as she recounts how the Henry Ford Health chemistry division, in which she is associate director, has identified a patient care need. She talks about the desire to improve health outcomes. Identifying problems in the preanalytical process. Appropriate test utilization. Putting together a team to develop training material. Assembling data and information prior to implementation. Informatics challenges. And, naturally, the perpetual financial concern of ensuring allocation of limited resources. How else would she—or any other laboratory professional—talk about the lab’s role in transgender health care? In fact, there are many other ways to discuss the topic. “It’s been in the news a lot these days, obviously,” says Matthew Krasowski, MD, PhD, clinical professor and vice chair, clinical pathology and laboratory services, University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. In fact, there are many other ways to discuss the topic.

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With hemolysis, tackling the rush with the reasoning

May 2018—First a journey. Then sometimes a vigorous shake. Little wonder that red blood cells hemolyze. “Red blood cells don’t like to be stressed,” says Kathleen Finnegan, MT(ASCP)SH, phlebotomy training program director at Stony Brook University School of Technology and Management, New York. She instructs her students to avoid stressing the RBCs by skipping what she calls the “martini shake” (CLSI recommends five to 10 tube inversions), using a needle that is the right size, and not using a syringe for transfer but instead a transfer device. “So it’s gentle,” she says.

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Turnover in phlebotomy: looking deeper than pay

April 2018—Laboratory managers struggling to reduce turnover among phlebotomists should look beyond the pay and examine their hiring and management practices and the dysfunction that could be creating walls between analytical and preanalytical staff. “It’s an enormous problem,” Dennis J. Ernst, MT(ASCP), NCPT(NCCT), director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education, says of phlebotomist turnover. “There’s no silver bullet because there are so many things that lead phlebotomists to give up hope where they work and in the profession. It’s critical that managers are tuned in to the needs of this specialized workforce because they’re varied and many.”

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Procedures up to date? Fighting injury in phlebotomy

February 2018—Requiring strict adherence to the latest industry standard for venipuncture can go a long way to minimizing the risk of phlebotomy-related lawsuits and multimillion-dollar jury awards. “It revolves right back to education,” says Nancy Erickson, PBT(ASCP), an expert witness in more than 30 phlebotomy-related lawsuits. She says lack of education and failure to follow the standard of care cause the two most common patient complaints that lead to phlebotomy-related litigation: nerve damage and syncope.

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Class act in Ohio expands pool of phlebotomists

December 2017—After two rounds of a new program to train high schoolers in phlebotomy, OhioHealth is seeing the fruits of its efforts. It has hired 19 of its trainees and a third course, set to begin next month, has 20 high school seniors enrolled. Just when OhioHealth’s phlebotomy staffing needs were expanding, laboratory services leaders were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the training students were receiving at most of the phlebotomy programs in the Columbus area.

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15th phlebotomy edition holds ‘latest, greatest’

July 2017—After overseeing 10 editions of So You’re Going to Collect a Blood Specimen: An Introduction to Phlebotomy, Frederick L. Kiechle, MD, PhD, can authoritatively say that the 15th edition is the best. Released in March, this edition provides new information on ultrasound-guided peripheral intravenous cannulation, comprehensive instructions on proper hand hygiene, and a deeper dive into quality assurance.

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Helping phlebotomists ease pediatric patient anxiety

June 2017—“It’s the most talked about pain kids experience, even more so than post-op surgical pain.” Julie Piazza, a certified child life specialist, is referring to needlestick pain from pediatric blood draws. As project manager for patient and family-centered care at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in the University of Michigan health system, now known as Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, Piazza has observed anxiety at both ends of the needle.

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Lab shoots for better phlebotomy service, satisfied patients

March 2016—Try running a race and tying your shoes at the same time. That is the kind of challenge laboratories face when they endeavor to refine their processes while providing all the usual services clinicians and patients expect. When laboratory leaders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston surveyed the landscape of their phlebotomy operations, they spotted many opportunities for improvement through Lean Kaizen events as well as technology that reduces the risk of human error.

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