Blood test reactions

The high school that I teach in had a school-wide blood screening yesterday. The scene was mass hysteria! Faintings, screaming, students lying in the hallways, etc. I taught these students after the bloodtests and some of them really did not look well - pale, listless, arms stiff from pain. Is this normal? Some kind of psychological herd effect? I've had blood tests in my life and don't remember them being that big of a deal.

[Altra, BSN, RN]

Some kind of psychological herd effect?

That would be my guess.

I'm curious about the screening ... the school actually obtained parental consent for a (minimally) invasive procedure on an entire student population?

[JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP]

Yes, this was with parental consent. This is a Jewish high school and they're screened for recessive genetic diseases. The results are placed in a database that they can consult when/if they're thinking of having kids.

[Pedi-ER-RN, RN]

Sounds like they might have had a vagal reaction to being stuck and seeing their own blood. We have teenage volunteers at our hospital and they get weak and sick all the time after seeing something bloody or seeing a sick person.

[EricJRN, MSN, RN]

I used to work for a blood bank and when we went on high school blood drives, things could always get interesting. These sorts of vagal reactions are pretty 'contagious', especially among young people - when one student began to feel faint, look sweaty and pale, then you had several others around the student begin to feel bad as well.

[Blee O'Myacin, BSN, RN]

The high school that I teach in had a school-wide blood screening yesterday. The scene was mass hysteria! Faintings, screaming, students lying in the hallways, etc. I taught these students after the bloodtests and some of them really did not look well - pale, listless, arms stiff from pain. Is this normal? Some kind of psychological herd effect? I've had blood tests in my life and don't remember them being that big of a deal.

Sounds like the vagal response added to the "teenage girl sydrome". How much blood did they need? Was it more than a tube or two?

Is this a co-ed school? How did the boys take the blood draws? Screaming and fainting too?

I'm going with a combo of the vagal + the herd effect + dehydrated teenagers.

Must have quite a scene.

Blee

[athomas91]

kids/teens esp boys are very parasympathetically driven and full of vagal tone... it is not unusual for them to react that way...the hysteria and screaming and such is just high school kids feeding off each other... :)

[Gompers, BSN, RN]

I remember a blood drive in high school...

I think half the football team passed out after giving blood. Many of the girls were sobbing about giving blood but insisted on having it done, because "everyone else is doing it" and all that. Kids were laying down to have the blood drawn then screaming their lungs out the second the alcohol wipe touched their skin.

I agree it's a combination of things. I can totally see it if the whole school had to do have blood drawn through no choice of their own.

[JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP]

I wouldn't call it "no choice of their own". Anyone who chooses not to have the testing done doesn't have it done. But most chose to do it because they don't want to pass genetic diseases on to their offspring.