Do not draw from an arm with a heparin lock or heparinized catheter.
Blood should be collected in a blue top tube containing 3.2% buffered sodium citrate.
Evacuated collection tubes must be filled to completion to ensure a proper blood to anticoagulant ratio.
Immediately following collection, mix sample thoroughly by gently inverting 8 - 10, times to prevent clotting
A discard tube is not required prior to collection of coagulation samples except when using a winged blood collection device (i.e. "butterfly"), in which case a discard tube should be used.
When noncitrate tubes are collected for other tests, collect sterile and nonadditive (red-top) tubes prior to citrate (blue-top) tubes.
Any tube containing an alternate anticoagulant should be collected after the blue top tube.
Serum gel tubes with clot initiators should also be collected after the citrate tubes.
Spin
Transfer the plasma into a Screw-cap polypropylene frozen transport vial/tube - 4mL (LabCorp), labelled as Na cit plasma