Blood Transfusion

Ward duties are sometimes a pain especially when you’re given those toxic ones. Last night, I was assigned to this patient who had blood transfusion and I was really scared because of this trauma I got from St. Mary’s ward. Way back then, we did this blood transfusion to an old woman who had colon cancer terminal stage. She was fine during the blood transfusion but after 30 minutes, I was doing my charting when someone called because the tube which the blood was running on had lots of air in it, and I mean LOTS AND LOTS OF AIR!! Was so scared of getting an IR because of that, a good thing that the nurse on duty didn’t give that nor did my clinical instructor. She flushed the air out and the blood transfusion resumed. Thank God everything went almost well. And so…. Last night, afraid of getting the blood reach 6 hours or getting air into the tube, I had to closely watch that patient who had anemia @_@. I wasn’t even able to take the vital signs of my second patient. A good thing that my second patient was stable and only had an IV to monitor. Thanks to my groupmates for helping me out with that other guy. Haaaay.. A good thing that the blood transfusion this time went very well even though we had to extend for another hour (a total of five hours of blood transfusion). After that, I was really shocked that they had to proceed with the next bag of blood. @__@ Really wanted to leave already but had no choice. D: Good thing it went well. When we had our duty tonight, I was happy that my patient who was having the blood transfusion was already going home. During our rounds, they thanked me for the monitoring that we did last night especially with the second bag. (Even though we already left after 2 hours when the second bag was started). Was nice to have known that they said that or maybe they just fell asleep during the second transfusion. Wew~ Happy also that our clinical instructor finally got the distribution right and still hoping that she would do the same next week.

Past experiences really bring a certain effect to the present time. Skills needed vary depending in every situation. Sometimes we just really need to develop our skills more and face our fears to bring light to our problems. A great feeling to be thanked by our clients and they inspire us to become more effective in a certain way.

~ by dchen on May 7, 2008.