Mentor Interviews

My mentor is Dr. Kurt Mathews, a surgical pathologist, however, he is exceptionally busy. So far, I have seen him once since I started my internship and that only lasted for about ten minutes, in which he was grossing in the tissue room. Needless to say, that doesn't make it easy to ask him a long list of questions; in fact, I didn't have the chance to ask a single question about anything. However, I planned for this and interviewed the people that mentor me everyday, and that I work with regularly. I intrviewed five phlebotomists and was able to get a really good idea of their motivations and what it took to work in their job.

Phlebotomists draw blood, log it into the system, and distribute it to the different workbenches: hemetology, chemistry, microbiology, and blood bank. There are always phlebotomists on duty in the lab because patients need their blood drawn at regular intervals, sometimes in the middle of the night, and ED (emergency department) is always working. The shift that I usually work with comes in at 4:30 in the morning and leaves at 1:00 in the afternoon when the PM shift comes in. Each shift is around three people. There are regular sweeps of the hospital which occur on the even hours. The patients that need their blood drawn have their information printed out onto lables and distributed to the phlebotomists. Then, in between sweeps, there are STAT draws, which mean they need to be drawn immediately. Then, the specimens are brought back to the lab, either by the phlebotomists, or put into vaccum tubes and sent to the lab. Then, there is a phlebotomist who stays in the lab to recieve the orders and specimens and to distribute them. This is very important because it is where the patient information is attached to the specimen. Overall, the phlebotomists are responsible for drawing the blood, loggin it into the computer (along with any other specimens the nurses send), lableing, and distributing. They are where the process starts.

For most every phlebotomist, their jobs are stepping stones. No one said that they graduated high school with the dream of drawing blood, but choose the job because of its financial security and as a way to get into the health care system. They work at Scripps for a variety of reasons, namely its location in proximity to them, and often because of its great work environment. There is a very small crew with a large workload, but everyone seems really upbeat, friendly, and happy. However, one common trend is that people want to move on an up from phlebotomy into other areas of medicine, such as respiratory therapy or nursing. Others, however, like phlebotomy because it makes a difference to the patient and helps save lives, but they are not directly responsible for the lives of others.

To become a phlebotomist is a fairly simple process, involving a six week course and a high school diploma. Everyone said that they first start out sticking a bannana in order to understand what it feels like to use the needle. Then, trainees start sticking each other. I've heard horror stories from phlebotomists about their time in school, where they had intense bruising from practice. After getting their license, they intern with other phlebotomists in order to watch and occasionally fraw blood from a willing and informed patient. I always ask what the first time was like, and most say that they don't remember, except that they were shaking and couldn't find the vein. One of the new phlebotomists has only been working for two months, and is already off on his own and rarely has to do re-draws. Everyone has said that experience is the best teacher and that that is where they really learned everything. I also talked to the Pathology Assistant, Viviana, who has her bachelors in biology and has a phlebotomy license. She just started working in Pathology and also agrees with the other phelbotomists: the only way to learn is to do, and that phlebotomy is a great way to get started in medicine.

Most of the phlebotomists I talked to agreed that phlebotomy is certainly more rewarding than any similar jobs, (such as in restaraunts or banks) but that they want to go into something more involved. Going around with different people, its easy to see how they incorporate what they want to do in the future into what they're doing now. For example, one guy always asks patients if there is anything else he can do for them before leaving and tries to be more involved, whereas many others don't. He also said that he wants to be a respiratory therapist so that he gets to help the patients more, be more connected to them, and see if they end up alright. On the whole, people agreed that it is a satasfying jub up to a point, but that they end up wanting more. Everyone agreed that they wish they had started sooner so that they could have gotten more experience and figured out where they were going earlier.

The one thing that is always emphasized over and over again is to check and double check the patient's name, medical record number, and date of birth. It is exceptionally important to make sure that they test that is run is run on the right sample, otherwise the patient might get blood cross matched wrong and die. Also, gloves are exceptionally important and we go through a lot of them everyday, switching between patients and before handling any specimen, even if it's in a bag. Organization and process are key to making sure that they right test is run for the right patient. As Scripps is a hospital, its main goal is to help people feel better and recover from their medical issues. Speed, efficiency, and empathy are all integral parts of this workplace. Everyone always talks about how they would feel if they were a patient who had to have multiple blood draws, or have their blood drawn, then sent back to the waiting room. There's no strolling through the halls or wandering, everything has a purpose and most all orders are drawn in a timely manner. There is even a screen to track all of the orders, the time they were submitted, the time they were drawn, and the time they were recieved. Everything centers around making sure that they doctors have everything they need to take care of the patient in a timely manner, and also making sure that they patient is as comfortable as he or she can be.

One topic that is brough up routinely is responsibility. Whatever person is logged into a computer is responsible for any specimens recieved to that computer and therefore must make sure that he or she logs out in order to make sure that a mistake isn't made by someone else using his or her log in. Other than that, working with other is important, patients and co-workers a like. The lab is not a very large space and the phlebotomists rely on one another to take certain orders and to organize the work. Even people who may have little issues with each other never get into real arguments. Everyone seems to get a long pretty well.