Pediatric Blood Draws (Nursing)

00:01 Pediatric blood draws.

00:03 As a nurse, you're gonna need to know how to draw blood from a pediatric patient and make this a less traumatic experience for everyone.

00:09 And this involves trying to incorporate a cheerful environment, now this is hard because kids are sick and they're scared but you can do your best.

00:16 There are certain special phlebotomy chairs, sometimes they look like a fire engine, and sometimes this can help decrease pediatric anxiety.

00:24 Another good option is a procedure room.

00:27 And this is where you'll actually take the baby out of their hospital room into a procedure room and this is a good place to do painful or scary procedures so that the child can actually sleep and rest in their own hospital room.

00:39 You're gonna want to use kid-friendly equipment and supplies.

00:42 You're gonna try to provide physical and visual distractions and sometimes the parents can help but usually this is the staff's job.

00:50 At the end you want to offer a reward.

00:54 When you draw blood from a pediatric patient, you need to remember that they have va small body so they have a small blood volume.

01:00 You need to determine a safe amount of blood that can be drawn from your patient.

01:04 To help assist with the pediatric blood draw, you can use a heel warmer or a warm blanket to help the surface level capillaries vasodilate.

01:12 In a patient weighing less than 20 pounds, you're gonna obtain blood via a heel stick.

01:17 In patients greater then 20 pounds, you can do a heel stick or an arm draw.

01:22 In patients less than 1 year old, you're not going to be performing a finger stick.

01:26 And remember, let gravity be your friend, you can always put the extremity that you;re gonna be drawing in a lower position to help increase the blood flow.

01:35 A metabolic screening.

01:36 This is required by many US states on newborns and it's going to screen for metabolic disorders and genetic disorders.

01:43 Blood is colected via a heel stick and is added on to a filter paper card.

01:48 If a patient is diagnosed with one of these metabolic conditions, they can approach early intervention treatment.