Quality Assurances

Anyway, one of the phlebotomists at Davies screwed up collecting a specimen on a patient about a month ago; the patient had to be called back, and then the phlebotomist (a different one, I think) screwed up a second time. The patient was angry and sent a scathing letter of complaint to the director. The director forwarded the letter to the phlebotomy/specimen handling supe demanding some kind of explanation. The supe, who is something of a nudnick, made all the phlebotomists/specimen handlers write individual responses to the letter (which he gave copies of to all), even if they had nothing to do with it. My bud Lilian, a specimen handler, asked me to write her response for her. Here's what I wrote:


Okay, so the main problem here was that those handling the patient and the sample failed to ask questions. Questions such as “what kind of tube should I draw?" "How much blood?" "Did I draw enough for all of the tests ordered?” Even if there were no other specimen handlers to whom one could ask these questions, there is always a tech somewhere, or one could call Pacific Campus and ask them, or even call Quest. There is always someone to ask!!! Was it just laziness? Shame over not having all the answers? Just wanting to get the patient the hell out of there so one can take a break? Lame, lame, lame!! This isn’t rocket science, just take your time, focus, and double check everything before you let the patient go. Hard stick and iffy amount? Don’t guess, don’t assume, draw the amount the book or whatever says, and if you don’t know how much that is, find out!! The patient would rather see you going to great lengths to find out the answer in order to do it correctly than for you to seem like you have all the answers only to find out later that you had your head up your ass!!

Thank you for the opportunity to vent!

Your faithful chimp,

Lilian