You come back to the laboratory with a tube of blood and notice ...

[rlane42]

You come back to the laboratory with a tube of blood and notice that the tube does not have a label on it. You have one extra label for a patient from whom you were supposed to collect. Do you use this label for the extra tube?

Question 2

The physician is in the room when you go in to draw blood. The patient has an IV in the right forearm, and the left arm is inaccessible. You need to draw a blood glucose. The physician says that you can go ahead and draw the blood from the median cubital vein of the right arm because all that is running in the IV is saline. What do you do?

[nguyenhoanhat]

Answer to Question 1

Whenever there is a question as to the correct identity of the patient, the sample must be recollected. This sample cannot be labeled.

Answer to Question 2

Tactfully tell the physician that you are not allowed to draw above an IV. If you did draw from the median cubital vein, the blood sample would be diluted and the results from the testing performed on the sample would be falsely decreased.

[rlane42]

Gracias!

[ryhom]

Excellent