LABORATORY ROUTINE

In UARTO blood draw we deal with two types of participants i.e. follow up participants
and baseline participants.
When a participant comes for blood draw there are four stages that he/she has to go
through:
1. Identification and printing of labels and labels handled by Hellen
2. Creation of label sheet by Simone
3. Blood draw and labeling of samples by Obed
4. Collection of saliva at freezing temperature by Yonah.

BASELINE PARTICIPANTS
• When the participants reach the blood reception, Hellen greets them, introduces
herself and ask them their names.
• She asks them if they have started their drugs and if not she continues with the
assigning of UARTO IDs and then they proceed to blood draw room and if yes,
she asks them the time and the date they took the drugs.
• Usually if they have taken drugs in that same morning and with in two hours of
blood draw we go ahead and draw blood and we note it in the blood draw
requisition forms notes and UARTO face sheet. This information is entered in the
database.
• On the labels she writes the UARTO ID, initials, date, visit number and age on
one of the label.
• When they reach blood draw room Simone receives the labels and she creates the
label sheet. On the label sheet she sticks one of the label, writes the sex, age and
time of blood draw.
• She puts the labels on the couch for the patient who is on the couch.
• She also fills JCRC request forms for every study participant that comes for blood
draw.
• When the participant sits on the couch for blood draw, Obed greets him/her ask
the names and compare with the labels.
• Obed explains the samples we are to get from them as well as the number of
blood tubes we are to get. We explain to them the likely symptoms that may occur
and assure them that such symptoms will be temporary.
• We remind them not to take their ARV pills until next day after we have gotten
the second purple tube.
• Obed explains to participant how to rinse his/her mouth using water from the tap.
• Obed labels the saliva container and gives it to the participant for spitting and
explains to participant on how to collect saliva.
• Obed gives the labels to Yonah
• Yonah writes the blood request forms for MU-JHU
• After the participant has finished with saliva collection, he aliquots the saliva and
labels the aliquots
• He writes the saliva request forms for MU-JHU
 • Simone gives the breakfast coupons to participants and directs them to the
canteen.
• Simone assigns each baseline to the UARTO Research assistant who takes over
the participant.

FOLLOW UP PARTICIPANTS
• Hellen receives the participant and asks the names and looks for his/her names in
the database using “todays calculate”.
• She crosschecks to make sure that she rules out the possibility of having patients
with similar names.
• She prints labels for the participant and sends him/her to blood draw room.
• In blood draw room Simone receives the participant and adds the label to the label
sheet.
• Same procedures as above are then followed.

Note
• Sometimes you find participants having similar names. In this case we ask
participant for the Research assistant who follows him or her.
• Hellen, Obed, Simone and Yonah will have to crosscheck the labels to make sure
both rows are cross matching.
• Sometimes the today’s visit calculator may suggest that such participant is outside
window period i.e. it brings .1 on the visit number (Q14.1). In this case we
crosscheck with quarterly visit target dates.
• We also crosscheck with list of UARTO participants who consented to be in other
studies and those who didn’t.