Degree Name

Nursing Practice, DNP

Publication Date

12-3-2023

Upload Date

2024

First Advisor

Linda Latting

Abstract

The primary responsibility of a laboratory technician is to obtain patient blood samples through venipuncture as well as collect, transport, and store other clinical specimens. Poor blood collection can lead to erroneous and misleading results for the provider in addition to the annoyance of repeat testing for the patient. The lack of formal phlebotomy training provided to nurses could be contributing to laboratory rejections. For patients receiving lab services, how effective is an implementation of formal phlebotomy training for nurses compared to non-formal phlebotomy-trained nurses, in reducing failed lab results? The purpose and aim of this quality improvement project are to improve patient outcomes by reducing laboratory errors. Demographics including level of education and years of experience of the nurses were collected. Laboratory technicians were all full-time employees and were predominantly Licensed Practical Nurses (77%), followed by medical assistants (18%) and Registered Nurses (5%). There were no technicians that held higher than an associate degree. The average years of experience was 3.23 years. Phlebotomy-trained laboratory technicians were excluded from the project, as they have been formally trained in phlebotomy procedures. The project used laboratory error reports to collect pre-intervention and post-intervention data for 4-week intervals. Laboratory nurses received educational training that was created for the top three rejection reasons. Using Excel software, the pre-intervention and post-intervention data were analyzed using a paired t-test to determine clinical significance. The p-value was set at ≤ 0.05 for statistical significance. The p-value for this project was p=0.05 which determines that phlebotomy training makes a significant difference. Phlebotomy training improves nursing skill sets which directly affects laboratory rejections and improves patient care outcomes.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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