Common Mistakes: Performing Venipuncture or Capillary Puncture
These are the specific ways this task goes wrong on the job — not hypothetical edge cases, but patterns that cause real documentation errors, patient-safety issues, or workflow problems.
Pre-labeling tubes before the draw — if the wrong patient's tube gets used, this creates a serious misidentification risk.
Leaving the tourniquet on too long, which can falsely elevate certain lab values.
Drawing tubes out of order, allowing an additive from one tube to contaminate the next.
Massaging or squeezing a fingerstick site aggressively, which dilutes the sample with tissue fluid and skews results.
How the Quality Checkpoints Prevent These
Every mistake above is caught by one of this task's quality checkpoints — the habit of checking these consistently is what actually prevents the error, not just knowing it exists.
- ✓
Patient identity is confirmed with two identifiers before any specimen is collected.
- ✓
Order of draw is followed correctly when filling multiple tubes.
- ✓
Tubes are labeled at the bedside/chairside immediately after collection, never before or after leaving the patient.
- ✓
Tourniquet time stays under 1 minute to avoid hemoconcentration affecting results.
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