Currently ED techs draw blood. 40% of the specimens they send have issues (clotted, short sample, barcode on wrong, etc). I am working with the ED to give them more education, training, etc. I really wish our Lab phlebotomists could cover the ED, we would not have these issues.
Yes, there is a lot of blame going on right now, so I am proving to them that "garbage in, garbage out".
Unfortunately this is political, my pathologists can't change their minds on this. They currently do fingerstick glucose. They want Creat/GFR, urine preg, PT/INR (NO WAY!!!), and Troponin (NO WAY!!!). We are going to start with the Creat/GFR and when it probably fails, we'll come up with a better solution. Like...let Lab do Lab.