I’m in a high-school pre-veterinary class and we had to draw blood on a shot dummy AND a dead rat for final exams- and was the only one to get it on the first try w/out ‘killing’ their patient!

They now call me ‘Quick Draw McGraw’ :P

Today I had to dig for my butterfly and left school feeling very uneasy about that. My son is a paramedic and allowed me to practice on him this afternoon: six pokes, only 2 successful. I came home, went straight to bed and cried for three hours.

Tonight I’m raw from anxiety about continuing my blood draws. I feel like a failure. I’m scared. I’m bruised and hurting. I don’t want to be poked anymore and I sure as hell don’t want to poke anyone else.

I’m gonna do some ride time on the ambulance, to try to get my confidence back up watching the medics’ techniques. I’m taking some xanax. I’ve got to get past this somehow. Thanks for listening.

We had a Medical Technologist school there, and the students had a week or so where they would follow us on our rounds, and would draw each other with our supervision. I have pretty good veins, so I would frequently let them do me.

The whole “rolling veins” thing pretty much is a myth, imho, as a phlebotomist, you just have to know what you’re feeling for, and have a knack for hitting that tiny, pinhead-size spot that you feel waaaaaaaaaay doooooooooown deeeeeeep (ok, it just seems that way when you’re looking for veins on a 5-ft tall, 500 lb woman/man who says “it’s right there, that’s where they always get it”.

If you’re phleb…… you know exactly what I’m talking about!

One time when I was sick I stuck myself for a CBC. Needle sticks hurt but when you’re sick they hurt worse. I ended up making myself cry. Then I got mad at myself for making myself cry . . .

I have several complaints about this class. The instructor was not even going to demonstrate a blood draw…she just told us to find a vein and go for it! I insisted she demonstrate on me. She only demonstrated a hub draw and told us to use a butterfly for the hand and a syringe draw on the hand or ante-cubital area, that it’s not much different from what she just showed us with the hub draw. So we get to it. Most of the class is extremely well fed, if you get my meaning. Very hard to find veins and asking for assistance from the instructor is difficult as she is always either out of the class or busy doing inventory in the supply room. We are pretty much on our own. Needless to say, there are lots of hematomas, and unsuccessful blood draws (something else people won’t die from).

Then there are the ones who have thrown their own class under the bus by complaining about all the bruises and pain they have endured, so much so, that the whole school has heard and we have can recruit no volunteers. The crybabies won’t let anyone work on them and whine when no one will let them draw blood because of their attitude.

How do you deal with this? We have a minimum number of sticks to complete by the end of the class (75), a quarter of the class no one wants to stick because of their lack of brain to mouth filters, half the class has fat buried veins and the rest of us look like we’ve been pummeled, poked and beaten about the arms and hands because we are the only ones willing to be stuck because we have easily seen veins.

I am looking at my feet thinking that, hey…I can do myself before class, bring in the vials and get signed off. I have a 4.6 grade average, have never cheated, but here I am thinking hard about cheating. What would you do??? (I have no family here, they are in another state, and, really, all my friends are in the same position as I).