Paradigm shifts in phlebotomy: providing reasonable adjustment for underserved patient populations

By watching this webinar you will learn about the adaptation of routine clinical laboratory procedures to enable capillary sampling in patient groups who require reasonable adjustments for accessing blood tests for clinical assessment.

Attending a phlebotomy appointment can cause high levels of anxiety, especially in patients with learning disabilities. Alternative blood collection methods are now available and offer reasonable adjustments to phlebotomy for many patient groups.

Analytical verification of blood tests from capillary samples vs standard venepuncture samples was done using our Beckman Coulter AU580 and DXI800 automated analyzers. A standard operating procedure has now been established as part of an end-to-end service, including electronic requesting, patient phlebotomy within a primary care setting according to clinical requirements, to provide reasonable adjustments for our local patients with learning disabilities. This service improvement allows patients to provide blood samples for health monitoring, when previously this was unachievable using standard venous phlebotomy and routine testing processes.

Of specific interested for people anyone interested in providing health equity in the area of blood test accessibility.

​​What you will learn

• The importance of patient centric sampling in providing reasonable adjustments for underserved patient populations.
• Investigating concordance of venepuncture samples vs capillary samples in a routine clinical laboratory.
• The importance of a multidisciplinary approach to providing an effective clinical patient centric blood testing pathway.