My hospital recently decided to ask nurses, rather than the phlebotomy team, to handle blood draws. This wasn’t a big deal, except that I’d never done it before, and to learn, I would have to practice on patients.
Surprisingly, drawing blood is not something they teach you in nursing school. I signed up to learn at one of our outpatient testing centers, and the night before I felt nervous. I have always had trouble with moments in health care when we hurt people in order to help them, and now, as I learned how to stick a needle into someone’s vein, I would most certainly end up hurting a few people. Read More