“A lot of patients refuse to go anywhere else or to anyone else to get their blood drawn. I love that because it means they trust me. ”
Phlebotomist, Penn Transplant Institute
In the transplant field, everything starts with the blood. If I don’t get your blood, the doctors and nurses can’t tell you what’s wrong with you, they can’t fix it, they can’t match you to a donor. I may be a small part of the transplant process, but I take my job very seriously. I’m a phlebotomist and I take samples of blood for testing.
I get to meet every one of our patients. People who are being evaluated for the transplant list, people who are waiting for a transplant, people who have had a transplant…I see them all. I don’t know how many people I’ve drawn blood from over the years. Hundreds? Thousands? I’ll just say that if I had a dollar for every person I’ve drawn blood from, Oprah and I would be best friends.
Not everyone knows I’m also an organ donor. About 10 years ago my older sister needed a kidney transplant so I donated one of mine to her. We had the surgery here at Penn. What’s unique is that we were adopted, and we don’t have the same biological parents. But we were a match. I don’t share my donor story very much. But sometimes I’ll be drawing blood and the patient is nervous because they’re about to be a donor. I tell them I’m a donor too, and I can let them know what to expect and put them a little more at ease.
A lot of patients refuse to go anywhere else or to anyone else to get their blood drawn. I love that because it means they trust me. If someone is afraid of getting their blood drawn, I usually crack some jokes to calm them down. If you get them talking or laughing, they don’t even realize that I’m taking their blood. This job isn’t all about sticking. It’s about putting myself in the other person’s shoes and helping just make that moment okay.