When blood is drawn, there is an order in which the tubes should be used. This is a recommended order not set in stone because sometimes you might not need to draw specific tubes. So, It’s the order in which tubes are collected during a multi-to draw. The multi-order of the draw is performed because concrete tubes contain additives, and they don’t want to have cross-contamination in the sample.
The first tube that would be drawn would be a sterile tube usually a bright yellow top, the second tube would be a blue top coagulation tube, the third would be a red top to either solid red or what they call a tiger top tube, which has all separator gel so that you can centrifuge the blood, and it separates the serum from blood, the fourth order of draw would be a dark yellow tube for heparin with or without a gel separator, and the fifth order of draw would be a light olive green top for an EDTA tube.
