[UPDATE: I recently used spring-loaded lancets for this lab. They worked great. Here's a video showing my experience with them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ps2N0DHG4 This is great to show kids to take away the fear of using this unknown object. :) ] I made this video to show my students my experience with the EldonCard. After I did this experiment with around 75 students, I have some tips that I don't show in this video. 1) If a person is helping you (which I highly recommend) have that person wear gloves. 2) When disinfecting with the alcohol swab, use an outward circular motion (instead of sweeping microorganisms back onto your finger) 3) Use a pipette to get the one drop of water. (Don't use the bottle that Carolina provides) 4) Be properly hydrated before pricking your finger (this allows your blood to flow faster after being pricked) 5) Have everything ready and to do the steps in the correct order instead of by doing by memory (this caused the students' wounds to clot before getting out the blood) 6) The person that is pricked should squeeze out his blood on the EldonStick. The person helping should hold the EldonStick for them while they do this 7) Prick the finger towards the side of the finger, rather than the center. I think this might cause less pain since less nerves are located there. 8) To help get blood out quickly, after being pricked, make sure you are standing up. Place your arm with elbow upwards and hand pointed at the ground (like an upside down "L"). Then with your other hand, make a very tight fist on the pricked finger and squeeze tightly downwards, like you are trying to milk a cow. 9) TILT THE CARD IN THE CORRECT ORDER. The one thing that really messed up some of my students' results is that they didn't tilt upside down first and then right side up. If tilted incorrectly, the water in one field can spill into another field, causing the antibodies from both fields to mix and the results to be inaccurate. 10) Protect your results using clear packing tape if your card doesn't come with "fixation foil" 11) If someone faints at the sight of blood (I had a student faint while watching the instructional video) be sure to allow that person to lay on the ground until they recover. Picking up their legs also helps restore blood flow back to the brain . 12) Using lancets from a glucose meter doesn't work because the prick is way too small to get a decent amount of blood out. Use the lancet that comes with your kit. If you want a single EldonCard, I found this link on Amazon for a card that costs $11.95 http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Type-Kit-Eldoncard-micropipette/dp/B000FSOCR4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid;=1349597509&sr;=8-1&keywords;=eldoncard If you're interested, this is the EldonCard kit that I bought from Carolina if you need a class kit of 25. http://www.carolina.com/product/abo+rh+eldoncard+kit.do?keyword=eldoncard&sortby;=bestMatches I don't recommend this kit for a few reasons. 1) The bottles they give (in place of the micropipette) are useless. Not to mention, they give 4 of these bottles for a class of 25 students which makes no sense to me. 2) They provided a DVD for both of the kits I had ordered, which just seemed wasteful. I thought this should be sold separately, since I now have 2 identical DVDs 3) The DVD shows items provided with this kit that aren't provided by Carolina, like a protective cover for your results, a cotton ball, and most importantly, the pipettes! (I'd rather order a kit that comes with the protective cover, a.k.a. fixation foil, for each card; however, I've provided packing tape for my students to tape up their cards which works just as fine I believe.)

• published: 02 Apr 2012
• views: 39665