A Student's Perspective

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Clinical Rotations

Real World Training

At Medright we pride ourselves in providing real-world training for our students. Beyond our classroom training, we provide a two-week clinical rotation for all of our students. Other schools simply have students practicing on each other in the classroom environment, but in our mission to provide the best training possible, we have partnered with Corewell Health (formerly Beaumont Health) and Ascension,St John Health, St. Joseph Mercy and U of M to provide our students with an opportunity to perform phlebotomy on actual patients. The experience gained from this is invaluable, as our students interact with real patients in a real medical environment. But what is it like to do this two-week rotation? In this article, we let Kendall, one of our recent students tells the story from her first week of Clinical Rotation.

Day 1

"So, today was great. I did 15 draws today, all in the Antecubital with an ETS. I learned a lot, I filled out paperwork, scanned paperwork, urine specimens, and was shown how to use a centrifuge, pipette, and how to label urine specimens. I also witnessed a 12-month-old baby getting her blood drawn for the first time in the antecubital with a butterfly. I was shown how to properly place the baby in order to do the draw. I also witnessed a college male, get his blood drawn for the second time in his life and once the draw was done he just fainted out of nowhere, and it was so scary!! He looked like he was having a seizure! His eyes rolled back and his body was shaking and he was sliding down the chair, so to stop him from sliding any further I was shown what to do in this situation and that is to place your leg in between theirs and place the arm rest down. I gained more and more confidence with each draw and looking forward to doing even better tomorrow. I did not have any patients tell me, "No you cannot draw my blood," so that was sweet of them. They were all very kind, including the workers and patients. I like the environment I am in, they are all a big family there, and made me feel very welcomed."

Day 2

"Today I did 20 draws, all with an ETS in the Antecubital, and One Butterfly in the Antecubital. I have a Total of 35 draws so far. Today, I had way more confidence. I did my draws really well today, only 1 patient I didn't get blood from, I was in a perfect vein, but couldn't get blood flow. So two more proctors tried to draw that patient because they saw I was in a perfect vein and there should have been blood flow. Turns out they couldn't get the blood either because the patient was so dehydrated, so she has to come in another day to be drawn. I got to witness a little 7 week old baby be drawn with a heel stick, what a cute little baby that was! Everything is done exactly how Ms. Howard taught us! Other than that, I instructed at least 5 patients on how to leave a urine sample, went over the directions with them, then once they were done I checked the urine made sure the lid was on tight and that a label was placed, and last but not least, bagged it in a biohazard bag for the courier to pick up. The patients are telling me all kinds of sweet feedback, so are the proctors, it boosts my confidence up so much."

Day 3

"Today I did 25 draws, 4 of them I used a Butterfly (Antecubital) and the rest I used an ETS (Antecubital). My total is 60 draws so far. I feel like I am doing so good and loving it. My confidence is built. Today, I instructed at least 6 patients to leave a urine sample and then I labeled the urine specimens/bagged them in a biohazard bag. I also witnessed a teenage girl get her blood drawn for the second time in her life and she ended up throwing up in the garbage can. Not pleasant, but this stuff happens. I also re-stocked tourniquets, tubes, and urine cups. I scanned paperwork, filled it out, and signed off on paperwork. In the morning we are so busy, with all the fasting patients coming in, but after 12pm it slows down to a normal pace. My proctors are giving me so much compliments, and I feel very comfortable around them, they are great and the patients make me smile as well, haven't had a grumpy one yet, but I am sure that's coming as well :)"

Day 4

"Today I did 22 draws, 3 of them were Butterfly (Antecubital), 2 of them were Butterfly (Hand), and the rest were ETS (Antecubital). I am at a Total of 82 draws. Today was another good day, I enjoy going there, I enjoy my job. I am doing really well, all thanks to Medright for teaching me everything I know. You guys teach everything spot on, it's exactly how it works in the real world, to me there were no surprises when I walked in to my clinical, I had some type of background knowledge in everything they showed or asked me to do because I was taught it in class. So, today was the least patients we've had, we weren't as busy as other days. With that being said, I again did some re-stocking of tourniquets, butterflies, urine cups, SST tubes, and etc. Disinfected table tops. I also witnessed 10-year-old and 12-year-old sisters get their blood drawn, their grandma brought the two sisters in. And they were the first two patients (besides little babies) that cried. I can't believe that the week went by so quickly!"

Day 5

"Today I did 27 draws, 4 of them were Butterfly (Antecubital) and the rest ETS (Antecubital). My total is 109 draws! :) Today of course, was another good day even though our computer system went down this morning so we had to do everything manually for the first two hours, then once they were up running again, go back to those 30-40 requisitions we drew and enter them into computer/ print out proper labels, because we were just writing the patients name/ birthday onto the tube manually. Mid-morning was so busy, but great, i don't know I like it when they are busy..it's fun, better than sitting around and having time go by slow. When we did slow down, I asked them to give me something to do, so they gave me a box of new plain requisitions to "Rip apart" because when they come in the box they are all stuck together. ( don't know how to explain it, they just call it "Rippin the reqs" haha so I did a box of those. Then I disinfected the counters/ chairs and re-stocked tubes, hubs, and tourniquets. I got to know everyone a little more today, today i felt like I actually work there/ been working there. All patients were sweet today, everything went well. They are very proud of me, and want me to stay. Looking forward to next week, have a good weekend."