The Career From HELL!
Have you ever wondered if you could make a career out of phlebotomy? Before you do let's take a look at what is involved.
Well some people get barely any training at all. Hospitals will hire people from McDonalds, really anywhere, give them minimum training and sent them throughout the corridores drawing blood for labs. On the other hand if you do what I did you go through all the certification classes, programs and tests. Then you have to do actual time under pressure in a 'clinical', training for two weeks until your teacher scores you as worthy of certification! Then you go out into the field hoping to get better pay and you find out that the clinics and hospitals don't really care because they can take a person, give them minimal training and pay them less.
So let's say you finally acquire a relatively okay job. You don't get paid much but they promise promotion. First you arrive before seven in the morning because the patients start arriving early for their blood tests. You have to clock in, set up all your things at your station and then the girls at the desk begin to herd the patients in like cattle. You have five to seven minutes to ask the patient their social security number, birthdate, and name, look at what tests they need, gather your tubes and such and draw the blood, thank them and fill out the necessary paper work. 5 to 7 minutes!!!!! Meanwhile, people hate you, they loath you because who in their right mind wants to have a needle poked in their arm and possibly feel pain. Not to mention that because some phlebotomists are assholes and don't do a good job most of the patients are already traumatized. You can be drawing blood and they jerk their arm back, cry huge tears and tell you how traumatic it is for them, tell you how afraid they are before you ever get the needle near them and then they go white and you must become the psychologist. Along with all this you have patients that want to argue with you about what needle is best, what you are doing, ask questions about the tests they are having (phlebotomists are not allowed to discuss results or why the doctor is testing patients as many tests cover multiple illness so if any phleb tells you they know they are full of shit).
Old people have paper thin skin and teenie little veins that can collapse at any given moment. Children kick, scream, bite and so forth while their parents aren't any better. You get demeaned by disgruntled people who have been waiting for a long time and take it out on you, you get told off because people haven't had their coffee or breakfast and are pissy. If you don't draw just the right amount of blood on certain tests they cannot be run, so lets say a vein collapses in the midst of a draw, you have to insert it into a new vein and people go apeshit and blame you because their veins are poor. Fat people, I mean really obese people have veins that are so hard to find and honestly fat and vein tissue can feel almost the same and sometimes you cannot find the vein at all. A tube falls and you have to do one of two things, re-draw if the person is still there, or call them back apologetically and explain why like an asshole you accidently dropped the tube or the lab broke it (hey it happens I'v seen whole certerfuges break multiple tubes) but the phlebotomist will get blamed either way and the patient hates you.
You work on your feet and do not sit down all day unless it's lunch or a break. You travel back and forth to the labs and possibly run the centerfuges and such. You must run because some tests are STAT, life or death and must be tested immediately by the labs. By the end of the day, you are separating all the paperwork and tubes that come from other sources and from your own lab. You clock out around five or even six depending whether the paperwork is going good or bad, the lab holds you up, your station must be clean and preped for the next day. Your hands are raw from washing between ever single draw and wearing gloves all day long and your feet, legs and back ache like a bitch from standing on hard concrete. Sure you get weekends off if your lucky and work at a clinic, but you'll need those two days to do all your uniforms and try and rest for the next week of hell. Oh did I mention that you will work with maybe two to three other people and in the morning you will have close to 150 people lined up to have blood taken from you three or four phlebotomists every five to seven minutes.
Not to mention that a phlebotomist runs the risk of catching aids if they were to have the virus introduced from a leaking tube or wrong stick. You can get hepatitis from a patient, or any other type of disease that is communicable. Every sick person in the world comes to the clinics and you breath the same air, touch their skin at some point. Did you know hep can live on a counter for a week. So we risk our own health in order to help those angry and hateful grumbling clients who hate us for doing something necessary, possibly to save their lives in the end.....
So if you are a masochist and love pain, insults and the like, then become a phlebotomist. Of course in the end I left hell because I got so sick of apologizing for things that were not my fault and being debased by people who I was just doing my best to help. The next time you go to get blood drawn, please remember this story and consider how exhausting and horrid the phlebotomists job really is. The best patients I ever had, the happiest and most considerate ones were always the ones who were terminally dying. They understood the meaning of life and cherished it enough to be kind. Think about that.