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7 Tips to Help Avoid Phlebotomy Malpractice

Anyone can file a lawsuit and sue another person for any reason. Losing a malpractice lawsuit is often due to some type of negligence on the part of the health care facility and its staff. The best way to avoid negligence is to make sure you get as much training and understanding as possible. Again, anyone can take legal action against someone else, so these ideas certainly won’t exempt you from a potential lawsuit, but they will help you focus on areas you may need to improve. Always keep in mind that the safety of patients is the highest priority and should always come before everything else.

Here is the The 7 Best Ways to Help Avoid Phlebotomy Malpractice

1. Always obtain informed consent. Before collecting any sample from a patient (for minors, you must obtain permission from their parent/legal guardian), you must confirm that the patient has given informed consent.

2. Know and understand HIPAA. A patient’s right to privacy is an extremely serious matter. You or your employer can be fined approximately $50,000 per violation and up to $1.5 million per year for multiple violations. Take the time you need to review HIPAA and understand it. Do not allow laziness to put your profession or your companies at risk.

3. Make security a priority. Do not take shortcuts and always use proper safety containers and NEVER reuse needles or reuse non-sterile devices. Use the motto “when in doubt, throw it away.” Be sure to dispose of contents in appropriate waste/safety/hazardous containers.

4.Always follow the protocol. The proceedings have been set in motion for a reason. Many clinical facilities have strict policies because they want to ensure patient safety and want to avoid potential liability at all costs. Report offenders to your superiors. Never let anything get in the way of patient safety. PATIENT SAFETY IS THE TOP PRIORITY.

5. Pay attention to your patients. Numerous claims involving phlebotomists include, at least in part, that the phlebotomy tech does not listen to a patient’s concerns. Many cases involve a patient alerting the phlebotomy tech that they were in pain and the phlebotomists ignored the warning and continued to draw blood, resulting in long-term damage to the patient’s arm (commonly nerve damage). Another scenario that occurs is when patients express their stress and anxiety and problems related to the procedure to the phlebotomist, who then proceeds to ignore these concerns and continues the negligent actions by not offering the client a seat or a bed afterwards, resulting in results in injury. Don’t let time constraints lead to carelessness. Take a few extra minutes to recover and make sure no mistakes are made. Mistakes not only put your patients at risk, they also put your job at risk.

6. Be kind and courteous. This is an excellent rule of thumb for every interaction you have with another human being. Don’t limit kindness and courtesy to just the work environment, but work to exercise these traits outside of work. The reality of the matter is that if the patient likes you and has a favorable experience with you, that patient is less inclined to hurt you with a lawsuit. So be nice to everyone. Some patients make it much easier than others. The difficult ones just require more patience and understanding. Try to give them the benefit of the doubt. There are a lot of great people who are just having a horrible day when the two of you cross paths. We all have bad experiences in life, like losing a loved one, losing a job, or just having a terribly bad day at work/home. Understand that these patients might be dealing with something that is affecting their mental state, and on the other hand, do your best not to let your own problems conflict with your work. Make it your goal to give the patient a great experience by offering a great deal of kindness and compassion.

7. Stay informed and master your training. mahatma gandhi He once said “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” You should never stop learning. Even if he has been a phlebotomy technician for many years, he should always try to brush up on and perfect his craft. Things are constantly changing in the healthcare industry. If it’s not a new technique, it could be changes to HIPAA, changes to sterilization and disinfection techniques, the possibilities are endless, it could be a violation and put you in jeopardy of future liability. You can always learn more and you can always improve. It was Albert Einstein who said: “Once you stop learning, you start dying.” So keep learning.