Morning Draw:

Phlebotomy employees arrive at 0530; depart for patient care areas at 0600.
All floors should have phlebotomy in progress or completed by 0830.

Phlebotomy employees arrive at 1700; depart for patient care areas between 1730 and 1800.
All floors should have phlebotomy in progress or completed by 2030.

To schedule the phlebotomy team to draw blood on a patient the following criteria must be met:

1. Requisitions for the morning phlebotomy draw must be received in Specimen Control, 6240 RCP, by midnight. Requisitions for the evening phlebotomy draw must be received in Specimen Control, 6240 RCP, by 1700. The information needed on each requisition is as follows:

A. Complete and readable addressograph
B. Nursing station and patient room number
C. Ordering physician's name and code
D. Ordering physician's signature
E. Appropriate boxes marked (or written) for the tests needed.
F. ICD-9-CM codes must be recorded on the requisition as an indication of the medical necessity for each test order.

2. Between midnight and 0530 for morning phlebotomy draws and between 1700 and 1730 for evening phlebotomy draws, please retain any requisitions for additional orders on the patient care area (fill out a Phlebotomy add-on sheet and send to Specimen Control before 0500 am/1730 pm). This will allow the phlebotomy teams an opportunity to adjust workload before departure from the laboratory. The phlebotomists will accept these requisitions upon arriving at the patient care area. Patients scheduled to be drawn can be confirmed by checking the Nursing Collection Checklist or by reviewing information on Information Network For Online Retrieval and Medical Management (INFORMM) terminals.

NOTE: The phlebotomists will be dispatched only to floors who have submitted requisitions or who have made telephone arrangements due to late admits.

1. If, due to an error by the patient care area, it is necessary for the phlebotomist to re-stick a patient once the original orders have been collected, It is the responsibility of the patient care area to complete all necessary paperwork and to instruct the patient in the reason for the need for a re-stick. All re-sticks due to suboptimal quality of a specimen will be handled exclusively by the phlebotomy team.

2. All phlebotomy team orders are considered routine. If a phlebotomy sample needs to be sent stat, it is the patient care area's responsibility to complete a new requisition and deliver that sample to the laboratory. The phlebotomy team does not draw timed specimens. The exact time that a phlebotomist arrives on the floor cannot predicted. All specimens where time of draw is critical must be collected by patient care area personnel.

3. Most supplies that are required for blood draws are supplied by the Phlebotomist. If the patient was a late add-on, additional equipment may need to be furnished by the patient care area (e.g. Typenex bands or gray top tubes, blood culture bottles).

4. The phlebotomy team does not draw patient specimens for research projects without prior approval from the Department of Pathology Administration. Call Research Coordinator at 356-4149 for Request for Research Testing Protocol and Procedures.

5. The phlebotomy team will draw, but not deliver, samples that must be transported on ice or kept at body temperature. It is the patient care area's responsibility to deliver these specimens to the appropriate laboratory.

6. The phlebotomy team is not required to draw patients who are combative, uncooperative, or who refuse the phlebotomy procedure.

7. All patients must be in their rooms. Any patient who is not in their room for the phlebotomy procedure must be drawn by patient care area staff.

8. All patients must have a bar coded UIHC ID bracelet on. Any patient not wearing an ID bracelet must be personally identified by patient care area staff and a bar coded ID bracelet must be placed in a UIHC approved site.

9. The phlebotomy team does not draw samples from Hickman lines, Central Lines or any Central Venous Catheter. It is the responsibility of the patient care area to draw these samples.

10. Every morning and evening after the phlebotomist has completed drawing the patients on each patient care area, he/she will leave a computer sheet called a Nursing Collection Checklist at the nursing station. This is a list of all patients that were scheduled to be drawn and the tests that were ordered. If blood was drawn, the phlebotomist will write his/her initials next to patient's name. In addition, if the patient was not drawn, the following information will be written on the collection list: 1) the reason why they were not drawn, 2) the name, plus title of the person notified. This list will be left at the nursing station and it is the responsibility of the patient care area to check this list and inform the physician of patients not drawn.

11. Requisitions submitted for the evening phlebotomy draw that request an analysis that is required to be drawn in the morning (fasting requirements, viable white cells, etc.) will be held in the laboratory and drawn on the next available morning collection run.

12. If there are any questions, please contact the Phlebotomy Supervisor at: Daytime-6-3575; Nights-3-7679 or the Assistant Laboratory Manager at: 6-8620.