Unacceptable

I have recently had a terrible experience at Lancet Laboratories in Netcare Christiaan Barnard Hospital.

My 6-day old infant son needed to get a routine TSB blood test. We bought him into the Lab on 27 December 2019. The only nurse at the facility had to call head office to enquire as to how best to extract blood for this test (hand, arm or foot) - this was a first warning, and I asked her if she had any experience drawing blood from an infant, to which she responded ‘12 years’.

The nurse then spent 5 minutes looking for a vein in each arm and hand, while my baby was screaming. She then proceeded to stick a needle in his right arm, and drew some blood quickly and took the needle out. There was not much blood in the vial and I asked her if she thought there was enough blood to conduct the test. She said that she is sure that it was sufficient and said she would call me otherwise. About 2 hours later, we received a call notifying us that the amount of blood serum was not sufficient to conduct the test, and that we would need to bring the baby back in to extract blood.

The whole experience was completely unprofessional. Surely the nurse on site should know how much blood is required for a routine test. More so, a nurse should emphasize with a very traumatic experience for both patient and parents considering the size and age of patient, so that the requirement to repeat the process unnecessarily is avoided.

This is completely unacceptable. We will no longer be making use of Lancet Laboratories for any of our test requirements.