More phlebotomy experiences...
In an attempt to save money, or be lean, or have less hours, or something like that, our hospital is having techs rotate in as full day phlebotomists. I would say our lab was probably 50/50 split on either being fine with the idea or absolutely hating the idea. Personally, it really doesn't matter to me. As a new tech I feel I could use the experience.
As a student we went up twice a week, every week, to do the morning pick-ups. After I was hired in May, I'd say I only went up once or twice in a month. It would seem that you definitely lose your edge when you don't get to do it enough. If I knew I would never have to do phlebotomy again, I guess I'd rather not work 8 hour shifts doing it. However, as long as I am working where I do, I'm pretty sure that I'll be doing phlebotomy so I may as well keep my skills up.
Today was a good example of working on my skills. I was asked to cover for a phleb today so I went up on morning pick-ups. Not only did I not have any misses, I get every one of my eight patients on the first try AND completed them all in an hour and a half. Usually I'm lucky to get four in an hour, I tend to be kind of "chatty" with the patients from time to time.
I'm starting to get pretty good at finding veins on the different types of challenging patients. Oddly enough, the hardest age group for me is people around my own age. I have no idea why this is, but I'm working on it. I"m scheduled for another full day of phlebotomy next week. I know it's only a matter of time before I'm going to have to face my biggest fear... ER patients. Our ER mainly only calls the lab to help if they can't get them, which makes me feel added pressure. Also, I haven't seen anything "crazy" like the stories that all of our seasoned techs seem to have, so I know that day is coming.
I guess I'm going to have to earn those stories eventually, so that I can pass them along to all the new techs coming in!