Final answer:
When drawing an ABG, blood is placed in a heparinized tube without air bubbles, put on ice, and labeled with the patient's oxygen status. Blood type cross matching is crucial for transfusions unless there's a life-threatening hemorrhage when type O can be used. Proper sample handling, like plasma quenched with methanol, is important for accurate results.
Step-by-step explanation:
When drawing an arterial blood gas (ABG), you need to put the blood in a heparinized tube, make sure there are no air bubbles, put on ice immediately after drawing, with a label indicating if the patient was on room air or how many liters of O2 they were receiving. This is essential to ensure the accuracy of the ABG analysis.
Cross matching to determine blood type is necessary before transfusing blood, to make sure that the recipient's immune system will not react negatively to the donor blood. However, in situations where there is significant hemorrhaging and an immediate threat to life, type O blood, which is the universal donor, can be given as it is most likely to be compatible with any blood type.
During blood sample collection, it is important that certain samples, like those collected into tubes with K2EDTA, are handled properly, such as being centrifuged to obtain plasma. The plasma samples are then often quenched with methanol before analysis to preserve the integrity of the sample.