I wonder if someone out there can tell me the rules as to when a phlebotomist is doing their thing at what point they should put on gloves?
I’ll start by saying perhaps I have a skewed view on this, or maybe it’s just that I go to a super professional tattoo/piercing shop. I’ve been to this place several times and I would say during the prep phase alone, each artist has changed their gloves at least 5-6 times. They put on new gloves every time they go to touch an instrument, bottle of ink, tape, etc etc. Oh, and lest we forget, they wash their hands for a good few minutes before starting it all too – by the time they put the needle to the skin, I’m pretty sure they’ve cleaned through a few layers of their own.
So, this image of a tattoo parlor remains in my head every time I go to the doctor’s office and have to get blood drawn because I expect that if a tattoo parlor is THAT anal about cleanliness, a doctor’s office should be too – right?
Let me tell you how things went down today:
So I sat in the little chair thingie and I explained to the phlebotomist that I have had blood drawn several times and know the odds are higher from the veins in my hands than they are from my elbow-pits. (When I was in the hospital for the blood clot they drew blood every 6 hours, for 4 days straight. I think I know a thing or two about my veins.) She begins to prepare things – needle, blood catcher, gauze, alcohol, band-aid – all without the use of gloves.
She puts on the gloves, grabs the tourniquet and ties off midway down my left arm. She starts to feel around for a few minutes and then I hear a snap – she has purposely ripped off part of the glove at tip of her index finger. (insert quizzical look here) Not convinced that there’s a good vein on my left hand she moves to my right. She finds a vein, takes the alcohol pad and wipes the area off (with her half gloved, half not hand) and sticks. It hurts. Abnormally so. Instead of continuing, she stops because, “you’re swelling”. When she pulls the needle out, more blood than I have ever seen in a routine blood test spits out. She puts the gauze AND the alcohol pad on the spot, asks me to hold it down, and throws a band-aid over it.
She then asks if she can see my arms anyhow and I show her where one person had relative success with a vein. She goes for that one – nothing comes out.
Thankfully, another phlebotomist walked in the room around that time and my tech asked if she could give it a try. The first failed vampire lady with the exposed finger set everything up for the second phlebotomist and then walked away. While I was left alone in the room for a minute I contemplated asking her what the rules were with regards to gloves. I wondered if there was any way I could tell her about miss no-gloved pointer without her hearing…
The new tech walks in and I explain my hand veins again and she looks at my left hand and thinks she knows where to stick. She ties off my hand at the wrist (weird), and then proceeds to do the blood test WITHOUT ANY GLOVES AT ALL.
I was in a debate on if I should speak up or if I was just being paranoid but again- if a tattoo parlor is so concerned about keeping clean, shouldn’t a doctor’s office have a higher standard or at the very least the SAME standard??
For the record, I never saw either one of the phlebotomists wash their hands.
