Top Safety Practices Every Phlebotomist Should Follow

As a phlebotomist, you are responsible for drawing a person’s blood, be it for testing, donation, or transfusion. Your work directly involves needles and blood, so it’s essential to follow strict safety practices to protect yourself, your patients, and others around you.

In this guide, we’ll walk together through the most critical safety steps every phlebotomist should observe, helping you uphold your responsibility with integrity and care.

1. Hand Hygiene

Good hygiene is among the most critical safety practices within any healthcare occupation, including phlebotomy. In phlebotomy, hands must be washed with soap and water before and after blood extraction from a patient. A good alcohol-based hand sanitizer is an excellent alternative if soap and water are unavailable.

Washing hands prevents germs from spreading and minimizes the possibility of infections for both the phlebotomist and the patient. It is effortless yet so effective in keeping everyone safe.

2. Wear Personal Protective Equipment.

PPE protects the phlebotomist during patient access. Gloves must always be worn when drawing blood to prevent the phlebotomist from directly contacting the patient’s blood. In some cases, phlebotomists will also wear a mask or eye protection if splashing is possible.

PPE will reduce the risk of any bloodborne pathogen to healthcare workers and patients, including the viruses and bacteria that might be present.

3. Handling of Needles – Safety

Needles are sharp and should be handled with caution to avoid injury. The collecting phlebotomist must always use a new, sterile needle for each patient. Doing otherwise is unsafe and invites the spread of infectious diseases. Immediately after the blood draw, the utilized needle should be disposed of safely in a sharps container.

The Sharps container is designed to hold discarded needles and other sharp medical instruments. It prevents needle sticks from being accidentally inserted and allows for safe disposal.

4. Correctly Label Specimens

Once the blood has been drawn, the phlebotomist must adequately label the blood samples. Proper labeling ensures the correct matching of test results to respective patients, avoiding mistakes that might lead to a wrong diagnosis or treatment.

A phlebotomist should verify the patient’s name and any other identifying information before labeling the specimen to ensure accuracy.

5. Keep Your Space Clean

A neat workplace ensures safety for both the phlebotomist and the patient. A phlebotomist should clean up their work area, disinfect things, and dispose of medical waste routinely. This helps reduce the chances of contamination and infection. To keep the environment safe, all surfaces coming into contact with blood must be disinfected after each patient.

6. Keeping Calm and Reassuring

Apart from adhering to technical safety practices, phlebotomists should be composed and soothing to the patients and service users they interact with. Many people get nervous about blood drawing; hence, a tranquil atmosphere is necessary.  This helps ease the patient and provides an easy and safe process before and during the blood sample collection procedures.

The phlebotomist should take the time to explain the procedure to the patients on hand and answer any questions that the latter may have.

Conclusion

If you are interested in becoming a part of this line of clinical professionals, it would be an asset for you to pick up these safety practices. Allow Northwest Career College to get you started on achieving your goal of becoming a phlebotomist and learning how to practice this vital safety firsthand. Our Phlebotomy Technician Program provides hands-on training and teaches you the skills to work safely and confidently in healthcare.

With flexible class schedules and expert instructors, students can start working in their new career in as little as nine months. Hundreds of students have chosen Northwest Career College for their healthcare education; thousands more have decided to join them. Take the first step toward becoming a certified phlebotomist today!