THE SHIELD OF EVERY PHLEBOTOMISTS

No soldier goes to a battle unarmed that's why a Phlebotomist is armed with lots of weapons in his warding tray for his blood extractions. So the first thing he has in mind is to prepare his warding tray. This is where his weapons are found like syringes, tubes, tourniquet, swabs and anything necessary. No phlebotomist comes to go to a blood war without any extras too. So he has to see to it he gets the right things as he enters the patient's room. Let me introduce to you our warding trays in the lab.

the GRAY WARDING TRAY

This is the light-weight warding tray. This is the tray that I used during my first few weeks being a phleb in the hospital. I take this one if the shift is not busy. Although it's easy to carry but it has lots of disadvantages (for me). You can only take 5-10 samples of patients's blood (what if CBC with a chem test for instance). This will also take your busy time refilling when you're out of tubes or syringes. You have to take a look on your requests as it may fall out from the make-shift compartment. What's the good thing of this tray is that it makes your warding extractions faster. You can easily walk through the hallways swinging this tray in your hand. :-)

the WHITE WARDING TRAY

This is the heavy weight warding tray. At first,I find it so heavy with my little hand and short arm to carry, but I'm now used to it. So organized and clean to look at. It has compartments to make your requests secure from missing. Recommended for morning extractions. It can carry up to 45 samples. You can load enough supplies in it. This will make you look more legit phlebotomist too.

The good thing of getting big warding trays is that you can also take the big waste container (that yellow one where you put the used syringe, alcohol swabs, gloves). It doesn't require too much refilling from time to time. Just after your shift is done.

the BLACK tray

This tray is used for home service requests, This contains enough supplies for extraction. There is a butterfly syringe set in this tray in case of patients who have fragile veins. This is lightweight too and keeps the samples secure for transport.

At the end of the shift, the phlebotomist refills his ammunitions for the next day. This is to make sure that as another blood war comes, he is ready to take his shield whenever the call arises.

A CRY OF EVERY PHLEBOTOMISTS

If you think that being a phlebotomist or a warding medtech is easy, think twice.

"Here comes the NURSE...", as people sometimes call us when getting a blood sample, but at the back of our minds, how we would love to tell them that we are medtechs. But that's how they see us and to make things easy, we remain silent.

At just a simple look, a patient might ask: "Are you an intern?" but then we just ignore the insult and laughed at the thought to stay confident and prove to them they're wrong.  As the Coldplay song goes, 'Nobody said it was easy'. Sometimes, they have no idea how nervous for us just palpating the small veins of a cancer patient, obese patients and even babies when pressured to do it JUST ONCE (either thru syringe, vacutainer or butterfly method).

Well, the issue in here is...they just don't have the idea how it feels like to be degraded by someone emotionally, professionally and even physically just because you failed to extract. Here's also the thing, the SOs or the significant others cursing us for being so incompetent and pointing their fingers like we owe them a big deal. Even calling the attention of other people just to humiliate or compare us to other phlebotomists as well. REALLY! These situations do happen just to compensate that one mistake we did! They were not in the position when some of us phlebotomists want to disappear in an instant just because of shame, and the dignity that was taken out from us.

Yes, we encounter these scenarios everyday not mentioning the health hazards we face! They don't have an idea how frustrated we are trying to get blood as we swim the needle through and through. Even a simple 'Tsk, Tsk' is an alarm that we need to pull it out because it's hopeless and the patient complained already. Worse, we get discouraged that at the end of the struggle, the blood is still hemolyzed, clotted and needs re-extraction.

Yes, our job is to inflict pain to patients by using needles. Yes, we do accept our mistakes (even the hematoma on your skin, we're really sorry) because humans as we are, we fail. We're just asking you to give some understanding and a little of your respect to be considerate enough. We're also health professionals who took our time and dedication of studying and even passing the licensure exam. If we fail, I think there's a formal or a right way that you could vent your frustration, not to shout or curse us in public. Take note, this job is just a portion of being a medical technologist. Don't judge us as a whole.

But in the lighter note, we commend those people who regard us phlebotomists as vital in the laboratory. We really do appreciate those people who reply in our sincere 'Thank you' after every extraction.

This is a shoutout for those people who don't know us yet.  You just don't know...AS PHLEBOTOMISTS, WE CARE. To all the phlebotomists and warding medtechs out there, don't just say 'I'm just a phlebotomist.', Be proud of it because the patient's laboratory results depend on you. Blood collection is where it all started. We are the key players of the patient's diagnosis.

LONG LIVE TO THE SO-CALLED BLOOD SUCKERS IN THE LABORATORY!