"My recent experience for blood sampling"

I attend the OA Hub monthly for blood sampling, I’m usually bled by Fiona, a very experienced and competent nurse. Her time keeping is second to none, and she always takes me on time. After I’ve been bled and weighed, I always tell her “Quick and painless”.

However, this occasion was a different story. I was to be bled by one of the pool or bank nurses. They had great difficulty accessing a vein and explained that my veins were jumping around. After their third extremely painful attempt to harvest the blood samples, they decided that I’d be best to allow the nurse in the consulting room next door to carry out the procedure. As they inserted the needle stating “sharp scratch” as per usual, I didn’t feel a thing and the samples were harvested without difficulty. In the meantime, I had three extremely stingy puncture marks from the failed attempts by the bank nurse. The bank nurse explained that they’d bled 29 patients the previous day and had successfully carried out the procedure without difficulty.

I felt that the poor nurse in  the consulting room had had a busy enough morning as it was, without having to squeeze me into her already hectic schedule. Personally, I think that 10 minutes per patient isn’t nearly enough time to allow for circumstances like today, when one nurse is unable to carry out a procedure and a second nurse is expected to work around the three puncture marks and sticking plasters in order to obtain the necessary samples. Not the best of days. Most disappointing.