So I went to get my blood drawn recently and while I was sitting in the chair, I saw the nurse (and it was a nurse, not a phlebotomist – don’t @ me) get ready to draw my blood. She set the tubes up out of order and when I asked her about it she said this is the way that she has always done it. I stopped her and literally pointed to the sign ABOVE MY HEAD that stated the correct order of draw. She looked at the sign, looked at me and said well it really doesn’t matter. I said it did and I would call down to the lab and ask them to cancel the orders since I knew there was a chance that my results were now worthless (not that bad but I’d have a bad feeling in my stomach about them). She eventually drew my blood in the order I wanted but gave me a snarky look when she left. I can not wrap my head around how many nurses, PCTs, CNAs, doctors, and the like do not know order of draw. This drives me insane as it can completely ruin the draw and change all of values of the tubes if any of the wrong additives get into the wrong tubes.

This is all to say, below are generally the accepted order of draws (capillary is different from venous!).

Please note a lack of certain tubes in the capillary section. That is because not everything can be drawn capillary and not everything should be. Capillary blood IS different from venous or arterial blood and will give different results.

Okay, I’m done ranting.

Lolo