When I get my blood drawn a couple of times a year, they might rub a little alcohol on my arm before they stick me. But when I donate blood to the Red Cross, they spend minutes swabbing me with iodine in what I gather are specifically prescribed patterns.
Why is there such a prolonged ritual to donate blood but if they are just going to draw a vial there’s just a quick swipe of the cotton?
Well, for a WAG, the blood the Red Cross takes is going into an innocent person; the blood with the “good enough” procedure is going into testing which probably won’t be affected by anything that the alcohol swab doesn’t take care of. You’re not risking anybody else with it.
When donating blood, the needle is also in place for much longer, increasing the risk of infection.
not my area, but;
it’s also a bigger needle so I would expect increased risk to entrain surface debri
and as Zsofia suggested it’s probably more to protect the blood and the recipient than the donor. Blood may sit in storage for awhile before use, granted it’s chilled, but there’s limited, if any immune response available, and the recipient is almost always compromised, so keeping it as sterile as possible seems prudent
Yeah, anybody getting blood in the first place is probably not in the greatest shape when they get it.
How many germs does a quick swipe with alcohol kill?
When I was taking EMT-I training, the doc running the class acknowledged that the quick swipe with the alcohol swap was “about as effective as spitting on it, but you have to do it anyway”.