Ready?
Phlebotomist — your shift
Right patient, right tubes, right order — and the label goes on before you leave the bedside. Do the job one step at a time. Tap the thing that should happen next.
Full screen — no distractions
What does a phlebotomist do?
You take blood from up to sixty people a day, including the ones nobody else could get, and you make sure every tube has the right name on it.
Also called: blood taker, venepuncture technician, blood collection technician.
A day looks like
- 1You start at half past seven because the ward bloods have to be in the lab before the doctors' round.
- 2You find a vein on somebody who has been told all their life that they have none.
- 3You talk a terrified teenager through it without ever saying 'it won't hurt', because it will, a bit.
- 4You label every tube at the bedside, in front of the patient, every single time.
Hardest part
Missing. You have one go at somebody's arm in front of them, they are frightened, and if it does not work you have to say so and ask to try again.
Best part
Getting first time into somebody who has been stabbed six times by other people that week, and watching their whole face change.
How you actually become a phlebotomist
- At schoolNo degree. Good hands, a steady manner and the ability to be liked quickly.
- TrainingOn-the-job training and a competency assessment — usually a few weeks, then supervised practice.
- How longWeeks to start, about six months before difficult veins stop frightening you.
- Your first jobTrainee phlebotomist in an outpatient clinic, working up to wards and children.
Frequently asked questions
- Do you need a degree to be a phlebotomist?
- No. It is one of the few clinical roles you can enter straight from school with on-the-job training, which also makes it a common way into the health service for people who go on to train as nurses or biomedical scientists.
- What happens if they cannot find a vein?
- They try twice, and then they stop and ask somebody more experienced. Most hospitals have a rule about this precisely because the temptation to keep trying is strong and it is bad for the patient.
- Why does the order of the tubes matter?
- Each tube contains a different additive. If blood carries a little of one additive into the next tube, the results change — so there is a fixed order that every phlebotomist in the world learns and follows.
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