Sanitizing Area Before Drawing Blood

Video Transcript

"Donation processes. So, here she is sitting in our chair. I'm going to lift your chair up, so you're in the donation position. Ready? Ok. I'm Geoff. I'm going to be drawing your blood today. Have you ever donated before? Yes, ok. And, which arm do you like to donate from? So, I asked her had she done this before and which arm she wants to donate with. Usually, people who have done it before know which arm works for them. So, there's two things I'm going to give her now. This thing to squeeze and then we're going to wrap this blood pressure cup around her arm. We use these as tourniquets, so not actually going to take your blood pressure. It's just going to put pressure against your arm. It's going to make your vein come up. So, what I'm going to do is inflate this cup to about sixty. And, I'm going to have her start squeezing against it. This is going to bring her veins to the surface. And, make them bold so they're easier to find. I'm going to put this under your arm. So, right now. Hold your squeeze. I've found suitable veins. This is called palpating. I want to find the direction that the vein is going, how large it is and see if it's going to move around. Some veins are not anchored down by muscle and tend to move. I've selected the vein I want to use. And, so I'm going to use this aluminum sealing clip to mark it. I'm going to lower the pressure. You can go ahead and relax your grip. The veins going to go down a little bit. I didn't lower it all the way, it's going to keep your vein inflated just a bit. Next thing I need to do, is cleanse the site with iodine to make it bacteria free. Iodine kills bacteria. Are you allergic to iodine? No, ok. With the site preparation, there are two solutions of iodine that we use. The first one is a point seven and the second one is a point ten. I need to use a thirty second random scrubbing pattern to be effective with iodine. The size of the scrub also needs to be about three inches by three inches to make sure that no bacteria gets near the insertion site. So, that killed all the bacteria. And, now the second application is going to be concentric circles starting from the insertion site going outwards. This pushes all the dead bacteria away. We have to wait thirty seconds for this to dry, to make sure that no iodine gets in her arm when we insert the needle. And, that it's done it's job. After the thirty seconds have elapsed I'm going to cover her arm with a sterile two by two gauze."