One night I was helping out an RN who was assigned to a rather fresh open heart patient. The patient needed blood, and transport was called to go fetch it.

About 10 minutes later, the bag of packed cells arrived, and I brought it into the RN to do the crosscheck with the patient’s ID band. When that was finished, the nurse spiked the bag… and instead of going into the bag, the spike went through the bag. Fortunately, the RN was standing in the opposite direction, and the shower of blood that ensued didn’t get on her – just the floor, counter, sink, bed, and IV pump.

Well, this necessitated another trip to the blood bank to get another unit of blood, so I volunteered to do this to save time. I filled out another blood card and walked briskly over to the blood bank. When I got there, I explained the situation to the technician, who gave me a look that a parent would give a small child who’s just spilled their milk onto the floor, counter, sink, bed, and IV pump and said, “I’ll fix you another bag to take, but tell your coworker that she should consider being more careful.”

Huh!? Having an unstable open heart patient needing a unit of blood is the perfect time to start being uncareful, don’t you think?