home     about     submit your story/contact     best of     rss


Big Bloody Mess
Share:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • email
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Posterous
  • Twitter

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?

Share:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • email
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Posterous
  • Twitter

Comments

yes… it is also the perfect time to lecture someone about how they should have been more careful.

Hmm….spiking bags isn’t always as easy as people would imagine. Have they ever had to stand next to the bed, surrounded by watchful eyes, nervous family members, and being asked a dozen questions simultaneously?

We nurses are always careful…or at least, we should be. That’s our job. Yet, accidents do happen. Better it be only a bag of blood wasted and not something worse….like a bag of the WRONG blood getting to a patient.



So, what brought you to the hospital today?

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

Your Progress Note



Twitter


Nursing uniforms
Nursing Scrubs
Nursing Scrubs

From $8.95
Great uniforms including Cherokee Workwear at great prices. Lab coats and nursing shoes. Buy scrubs
ScrubsGallery.com

Spam Blocked

Recent Comments

Archives




Alltop. I don't know how I got there either.





Author

  • profileI have been an Intensive Care nurse for 11 years. This blog is about my experiences as a nurse, and the experiences of others in the healthcare system - patients, nurses, doctors, paramedics. We all have stories!

Find Me

Twitter Facebook RSS

I Love to Play