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Taking & Chasing Bloods (F1)

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Summary

This practical and comprehensive teaching session will guide you through the process of taking and interpreting blood samples, a task routinely performed in a variety of medical professions. The course will cover everything from the correct use of a butterfly needle to specific blood drawing methods. It will also educate you on safety measures to ensure no harm is done during the process, by proper utilization of tourniquets, alcohol pads, gloves and adhesive bandages. The session will shed light on finding a viable vein, an often-tricky aspect of the procedure, along with alternatives like drawing blood from the inner elbow, back of the hands, forearm and even the foot in rare scenarios. The course will follow-up with procedures to ensure the right patient is being tested and also brief you on how to interpret common test results regarding full blood counts, liver function tests, urea and electrolytes and more. This vital information could prove crucial in diagnosing conditions like gastrointestinal bleeding or blood loss.

Generated by MedBot

Description

This teaching session will provide a comprehensive guide on the practical aspects of taking blood samples, including venepuncture, arterial blood gas (ABG), and venous blood gas (VBG) sampling. We will cover the indications for each test, technique tips, and how to minimize errors.

The session will also focus on interpreting results and clinical decision-making, including:

  • When to choose ABG vs. VBG
  • Recognizing and managing common abnormalities (e.g. electrolyte imbalances, low hb/platelets)
  • How to chase and action blood results

Learning objectives

  1. Understand the importance of the right procedure and precautions for taking blood, including using the appropriate equipment such as butterfly needles, alcohol pads, gloves, clusters, and tourniquets.
  2. Understand how to choose the best method for taking blood, considering factors such as the patient's comfort, the condition of their veins, and your familiarity with the method.
  3. Learn the correct way to confirm a patient's identity before taking their blood to avoid possible mix-ups that may lead to inaccurate results or other complications.
  4. Understand the different types of common blood tests that are conducted in a hospital setting, including but not limited to: full blood counts, urea and electrolytes, and C reactive protein markers, and when to use them.
  5. Learn to interpret the results of a full blood count, paying particular attention to the three key indicators: hemoglobin, platelets, and white blood cell count, and what different results might indicate about a patient's health.
Generated by MedBot

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Computer generated transcript

Warning!
The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.

Hello, everyone. So I guess we'll just start for now. I guess some people are late or something, but it's fine. Anyways today, we'll be talking about taking and chasing bloods. So what do they mean by chasing bloods? It's usually about just looking up the results after the blood test is sent back. And well, basically you just see the blood results and decide what you have to do if there's problems here and there. So we'll get through those problems one by one. So first of all, like we're gonna talk about the basics of taking blood. So this is something called the butterfly needle that you will use a lot like almost every day in F one. So importantly, you should see um you have this safety hub A and B. Well, after taking this, you can retract that to kind of like cover the needle so that you won't poke yourself. So that's quite an important part. And also I've circled this other part, the lower cl connector with this green circle is to, to let you know that it is detachable. It's also quite important and I'll tell you why in a second. So most of the time my colleagues and I will take blitz with these two methods. Like you can use any one of them, you can find which one you're better at and use it. I personally like the first one. So basically you attach the butterfly needle to the vacutainer. Basically you put this rubber connector and into the vacutainer. So it becomes like what you see on the right hand side. And the benefit of doing this first method is that you don't have to open the test tube. You can just put the test tube into the vacutainer without even opening it and the blood will flow right into it. And well, the second method, you can detach the rubber area and then connect a string by twisting on it. And you can use a five mil string, 10 mil or 20 mils depending on what bloods you need. And then you just basically do the same method and just pull blood out from the arm. So other things you need are definitely alcohol pads, gloves, clusters and tourniquet. So tourniquet is this thing you tie on the arm. So alternatively, you may see this sort of vacuum needle thing. I've seen it before, but I've never used it because it's less flexible. You can't really adjust the needle as you want. If you, let's say you didn't get into a vein properly, you can still adjust with the butterfly needle, you can poke around. But with this one you have to be more accurate and it's quite, it's more straight, so you cannot really bend it around easily. So here I would note the steps of taking blood. So importantly, you have to tie the tourniquet around the arm. So on the right hand side, I've put a picture of like where you can put the tourniquet at around, like you can put it above the arms. So the purple arrows are showing you like where you can take the bloods from where you and the green arrows are where you can put the tourniquet on. So it's quite simple. You look for a vein. Uh after tying the tourniquet on, sometimes some patients have really good vein that you don't really need to even look for a vein. Some patients have really bad veins. So you actually have to press around and feel for something bouncy. So after you found your preferred vein, you can clean the area of the place that you wanna take the bloods from and then you just pierce them with the needle and then just take the bloods into the string which uh string or vacutainer, whichever method you prefer. And then you release the tourniquet and then you put a wipe or cotton pad over the needle to pull out the needle to control the bu the bleeding. And after that, you put a plaster on. So importantly, um always, always, before you take bloods from a patient, always make sure you are taking bloods from the right patient because this is a mistake that can happen and I've seen it happen before. So always confirm whether this patient is this person. And sometimes I like to ask them like, when's their birthday? Just to double confirm. And for patients, you know, old patients who are confused, they usually do wear like arm tags where it has their name on it, so you can check that as well. So usually, um, I would definitely recommend first of all to try taking blood from the inner elbow or the back of the hands. You can try forearm, but like, um, the inner wrist area is quite painful. I usually try not to go there. But I had to the last time because there was a chemotherapy patient. So usually when you meet chemotherapy patients, they have really bad veins. So sometimes you don't really have a choice but to go for a place that's more painful. And the last resort you can try the foot. I had to do this like a few times. But, or you can ask the senior for help. Well, usually the foot is when, also when someone is, let's say, um, paralyzed, like quadriplegic, like limbs are paralyzed or anything. And they pre or some people, they just prefer you taking blood from their foot because they say it's less painful but whatever. So basically, if you have to take it from the foot, so you can put the tourniquet above the, the green lines on there and basically you take blood from the foot area, the top of the foot. So you can try. It's actually not that hard. It's as easy as taking blood from the arm, but maybe some patients, their veins are also a bit hard to find and especially some patients who are swollen and stuff. Yeah, it can be a little bit of a challenge to find the veins. Ok. So usually the bloods we take in the hospital on day to day basis is um full blood counts, urea and electrolytes and C RPC reactive markers. So most of the time in the medical side, you would do this three. But I've been working in the surgical site and they like to also just put in the liver function test, magnesium and bone profile. Technically, it's not wrong. You can do it for all patients. It's, it won't be a problem either. Honestly, LFT is not necessary for all patients, but in the surgical site where I am, they just like to check it all the time. And so we'll go into detail on the first blood test called the full blood count, which consists of um all the blood stuff, hemoglobin, platelets, white cell count, neutrophils, eosinophils, all that smaller stuff. But importantly, these treat things are the things that you should look at the most. These are the most important things to look at. So for example, if a patient's hemoglobin levels are low then. Well, you can, well, maybe it's because of blood loss, it could be due to gastrointestinal bleeding or whatever you need to know.