Are premeds allowed to draw blood?

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sunshine02

sunshine02

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As in draw blood from a patient?
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Being a pre-med in and of itself, no. You aren't taught that anyway generally in undergrad.
 
I'm in the process (about 30 hours away) of getting my medical assistant certification. I'm drawing blood, checking lines, and charting with nurses and MDs at the UK hospital. It's a 900 dollar course, but it's worth it. It gives plenty of patient contact, clinical experience, filler for med school applications, and you make new friends.
 
spartan25 said:
I work in a state that doesn't require a license and I've done over 5000 'sticks' on patients with no such license
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From what I understand though you have a facility or someone with a license (RN/MD/DO) backing you up. Going out and just drawing people's blood would be a bad idea. Perhaps I'm wrong.
 
I don't want someone inexperienced drawing my blood :arghh:
 
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can you imagine your classmate poking your arm multiple times trying to find a vein?
 
hoihaie said:
can you imagine your classmate poking your arm multiple times trying to find a vein?
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My MA friend was covered in bruises after coming back from class. Some people never figured it out.



Premeds in clinics often are allowed to do finger sticks for various things, take BP, histories and weight, but I'd be surprised to see anyone who wasn't at least an EMT-B drawing tubes in the clinic.
 
J Senpai said:
My MA friend was covered in bruises after coming back from class. Some people never figured it out.



Premeds in clinics often are allowed to do finger sticks for various things, take BP, histories and weight, but I'd be surprised to see anyone who wasn't at least an EMT-B drawing tubes in the clinic.
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Premeds taking a history? Maybe a chief complaint...
 
Any premedss in the Pittsburgh area are welcome to learn to draw blood on me for the small price of a vente starbucks iced coffee. Throw in a bacon gouda sandwhich and you can try an IV.
 
hoihaie said:
can you imagine your classmate poking your arm multiple times trying to find a vein?
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Lol. This was pretty common where I got my training.

But really, most of your learning/training (where you'll actually get good... eventually) will be on patients on the job. Sucks for them. :p
 
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I draw blood from cadavers all the time. They don't usually ask for a license.
 
J Senpai said:
Yeah, I def. misspoke (misstyped?).
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I understand though. Many people just say history and don't differentiate between chief complaint and history, which is understandable in some sense. HPI is really just pertinent elaboration on the CC. Although, I've seen on numerous occasions where it takes the MD to figure out what the chief complaint actually is. That's after initial registration, triage, and nurse evaluations.
 
Hospitalized said:
Premeds taking a history? Maybe a chief complaint...
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Oh god. What exactly do you mean by history? At my clinic (albeit it is a teaching clinic where undergrads report to med students who report to physicians), I take full medical histories (or so I thought so..I check chief complaints, current medications, vital signs, etc.) Is this considered "taking a history"?
 
xyphr said:
Oh god. What exactly do you mean by history? At my clinic (albeit it is a teaching clinic where undergrads report to med students who report to physicians), I take full medical histories (or so I thought so..I check chief complaints, current medications, vital signs, etc.) Is this considered "taking a history"?
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It may be a history, but I highly doubt it's a complete history. It really does take an MD to take a full history, like I mentioned in my post above, it seems like everyone misses something at some point. Even MDs will miss things on occasion.

There's a very low chance that an untrained or partially trained individual will know how to ask all of the pertinent questions for a complete history. I think most professionals aside from the MD will follow the OPQRST format (onset, provocation/palliation, quality, radiation, severity, time) to get a good sense of the CC, and then will try to muster up some other questions that are pertinent. Some more experienced nurses are really good at getting a complete history. Some nurses just flat out suck and even ask irrelevant questions at times. That's not a knock on them, they just don't have the training or experience. What they're doing for the process of patient care is still important.

Those aspects you mentioned are important. Like, extremely important, and sometimes are very pertinent to the HPI, especially if someone comes in with a headache and has a systolic BP of 200. I would say they are part of the history, but they definitely do not constitute the entire history.

You can't really get a sense for a complete history until you've seen multiple physicians take histories. I've been scribing for 9 months, so it's essentially my job to write down a history, and I still don't think of the things the MD is thinking of when they are in the room. I can get a few. But a complete history? Bah. It's gonna be a while. You need a good knowledge base to be able to think critically through what is important.
 
Each state is different and each hospital/clinic is different. Some will require more and others less in regards to training to draw blood.
 
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