ADVANCE For Medical Laboratory Professionals

I spent half my 35 year career going on the floors. I got fairly decent at it when younger, but my back gave me trouble in the late 80's to the point of hospitalization. I haven't had to draw blood since about 1996. I would seriously consider retirement at the earliest possible moment if I had to do this again. We have a dedicated phlebotomy team ... See Moreat my place of business now. Our workload is so heavy we cannot spare techs for blood drawing. Why does management continue to pay tech wages to perform a job that can be performed by people who do it ALL the time, are familiar with the tests, the tubes, the weird new syringes they use, the whole caboodle, and do it WELL without lots of redraws? You really have to do this on a daily basis or your skill set for palpating veins becomes limited and you can only hit the people with big ones. With the typical patient now in the hospital that consists of less than half of the patients nowadays.

I think the key is to get some part timers in for heavy draw times (morning draw, ER) and have a full time team do the rest. Techs can then do what they're paid to do - testing - and not have their work flow interrupted by having to go and draw stats, etc. Everyone is much happier this way. I am an OLDDDDDD tech too, Lu, but have never waxed sentimental about blood drawing.

The tech in the article seemingly has the luxury of taking an hour and a half for 8 draws - about 12 minutes/patient. The hospital isn't making any money with a tech taking that long per patient. An experienced phlebotomist can do 8 patients in about 45-50 minutes. Even when I was drawing blood I used to only take about 5-7 minutes per patient. The... See More pressure to get down and start our heavy workload precluded a lot of chattiness on the floor. Most of the patient were too ill to be chatty with, unfortunately. This person must work in a very small facility. While it's good that she's getting the patients on the first try, the places I've worked in the past would be sending out search teams wondering why she's taking so long.

I love what I do. I love my place of work, Love to help

Knowing that I can make a difference in somebody's life, it fill my heart with gratitude to GOD for made me the person that a im today.

Darn!!! I was hoping against hope that they'd kill it right there.

Great news! We need a public option.