We drew blood again! (What a surprise!!!)
Anywho...
We did syringe draws today, and those are a bit more complicated than the vacutainer assembly setup, because the blood isn't magically sucked from the vein. Instead, you get to suck the blood, manually...
In a nutshel, you poke your patient with a syrige, then pull on the plunger to obtain blood. Though, there are two setups that can be used: the straight syringe, or the butterfly...
The butterfly is a small 23 gage needle that's connected to a small, but long tube which is attached to the syringe. They call it the "butterfly" because there are small "wings" attached to the needle to help you hang onto it. When you use the butterfly, you can immediately tell if you've hit a vein or not, because blood will start flowing up the tube. Then you pull on the plunger of the syringe to suck the blood...
The straight syringe is really just a syringe. Though, it is more complicated to draw blood with it. You see, with the butterfly, you can move the syringe all over the place without worring about moving the needle. But with a straight syringe, you have to poke the patient and hold the needle in place while, at the same time, pulling on the plunger. And, you wont know if you've actually hit a vein until after you've started to pull on the plunger...
When we drew blood today, we were given the choice of using the butterfly or a straight syringe. Of course, everbody (except me) picked the butterfly, because it was easier. The thing is, compared to other phlebotomy supplies, the butterfly is rather expensive (it's only around $2.50 but when you consider a regular needle is, at the most, 25 cents...) so some labratories will only allow butterflies to be used if blood cannot be obtained via a straight syringe...(So, you would probably want to use a butterfly on a drug user, because their veins are really screwed up...)
That being said, I really wanted to use the straight syringe, because it's the hardest method for obtaining blood, and I would probably be forced to use it. Luckily, I got to do the girl with the huge veins again, so that made the whole experience easier.
I did have a somewhat difficult time of holding my syringe in place when pulling on the plunger. At one point, I was afraid I was going to pull the needle out of the girl's arm, so I did the most natural thing. I pushed the needle in a bit deeper... sweatdrop
I think drawing blood with a syringe is a bit nerve-wracking, because it takes a considerably longer amount of time than with the vacutainer assembly. But some tests requre a small amount of blood, so there really is no point in using a vacutainer assembly...
Luckily, I didn't get my blood drawn, because I seem to be prone to fainting... rofl
After we drew blood, we spun the tubes in a centerfuge, in order to seperate the blood from plasma and serum. Basically, plasma is the liquid portion of non-clotted blood, and serum is the liquid portion of clotted blood. (Serum lacks the chemicals used up during the clotting process.) Though, plasma and serum look exactly the same. Actually, I found the plasma/serum to be quite disgusting--it was clear amberish color, but it reminded me of pus... burning_eyes
Next week, were going to talk about capillary draws... eek
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