I had to go for a blood test this morning - this is how it went:
The nurse came to collect me from the waiting room, she was rude and abrupt. Great, I thought. She then sat me down in the room, leaving the door open. Put a strap around my arm (not tight, just on me), had a feel around for a vein, a quick wipe and in with the needle. As soon as the needle went in I had an electric shock like feeling shoot down my arm, through my hand and to the tip of my middle finger. Then, no blood AT ALL. She removed the needle and insepected my other arm. Then she chickened out and said she might ask someone else to do it. Off she went, I heard her tellling another nurse, quite loudly, 'she said she got an electric shock from the needle!' as if I was a child. The other nurse came in, said quietly to the original nurse that she might have caught a nerve. The new nurse then put the strap on PROPERLY, needle in (absolutely painless) and blood came out fine.
It wasn't til I got home that I realised - the first nurse didn't have gloves on - which worried me more when I remembered that when she took the cotton wool ball off me (that I was holding on my arm) she was exposed to my blood. And so she had probably been exposed to many other people's blood this morning. And she wasn't wearing gloves. And she didn't wash her hands (not while I was in the room anyway, or before I left). And, when I think about it, the needle she used was already unwrapped when I entered the room. SERIOUSLY, what is going on here? Should I complain?
Rude, unhygienic (sp?) and incompetent! And right when I am already in a panic because I have surgery scheduled at our local big hospital that ALWAYS has problems with infections and norovirus.
