Our NICU uses both BD Microtainer and Greiner MiniCollect, and the cap colors don’t map 1:1, which gets fun at 5 a.m. heel sticks. Does anyone have a badge-sized PDF that shows capillary order of draw and brand-by-brand color equivalents so I’m not second‑guessing EDTA vs lithium heparin on the fly?
I made a badge-size card with capillary order (blood gas, EDTA, heparin, serum) and a BD Microtainer ↔ Greiner MiniCollect color crosswalk, plus a tiny red dot on EDTA so I don’t second‑guess ‘EDTA vs lithium heparin’ during those 5 a.m. heel sticks. Caveat: under isolette lights Greiner LH green and serum amber look similar, so I added the catalog numbers next to each cap to double-check. Want the PDF to tweak for your unit?
I turned mine into a two-sided badge — order-of-draw on front with ‘EDTA before heparin’ in bold, BD↔Greiner color crosswalk on back — and added a tiny QR to a live sheet so updates don’t require reprinting; saves me at 5 a.m. when my brain’s decaf. Small caveat: double-check against your current IFUs since cap shades/labels shift by lot. Want the template?
I print the additive abbreviations next to each cap (K2E for EDTA, LH for lithium heparin, SST/serum) plus a tiny order line — “blood gas → EDTA → heparin → serum” — so when 5 a.m. brain fog hits I’m reading chemistry, not colors. @ctorres love the QR idea; want my template that swaps BD/Greiner names, or should I post a one-pager here?