The never-ending blood transfusion...

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HI all,

Perhaps I should be posting this on the Poll forum...but I'll try it here. Lastnight..I worked in CCU as a second RN because there were five patients (full in our rural hospital). Anyways..I had a guy with a GI bleed. I gave him 6 units of PRBC's and 4 of FFP...eek. It was never-ending..it's not the giving that's hard...it's all the damn paperwork...vitals non-stop.....needless to say I have a bad headache this morning. Plus..I had another fairly critical patient to care for. I know I'm maybe just not used to the fast paced CCU...but man....that was a lot of transfusions... I'm just wondering....kind of a poll....how many units of anything..PRBC's, FFP, etc...have you packed into one person on one shift.??????....the sad thing is...his hemoglobin is only up to 6.9...I just called because I forgot to chart something and the sup. said that they had just ordered another 4 units...wow!!! This guy apparently has a serious bleed. Ok...I was just curious...thanks for listening..

Snoop':kiss

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Specializes in many.

That is a LOT of blood product and it doesn't seem to be doing any good if he still needs more, HUH? I spent my Friday 3-11 shift ( medical floor) hanging blood non-stop on a 91 year old DNR pt. We managed to pump 3 units into her, with Lasix in between and then as I was leaving the night nurse was hanging 3 units of FFP. When we started her crit was 15 and change and by Saturday morning we had gotten her up to 27! Then Sunday a patient had been held off of having his 2 units hung because his crit was only 26 and he was asymptomatic and the blood bank was critically low. ARGH!

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I am a Blood Bank technologist and have crossmatched for lots of GI bleeds, aneurysms, CABG post op, etc...but the worst bit came from the nurse in ICU after a wild night of at least 30 + products going to one GI bleed patient (who died) who THEN wanted a printout of all the products we sent so she could chart and go home....HELLO...didnt you at least keep the tags????

By then we had a full day of OR patients to type and cross...grrr. And gave us an attitude over all of this....when she was told that it would take a while to call up each unit individually....and we had no extra staff to do that immediately.

Sorry...had to vent. Save a life, yes, but really....cant you have some sort of organization????

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Originally posted by IloveSnoopy

HI all,

Perhaps I should be posting this on the Poll forum...but I'll try it here. Lastnight..I worked in CCU as a second RN because there were five patients (full in our rural hospital). Anyways..I had a guy with a GI bleed. I gave him 6 units of PRBC's and 4 of FFP...eek. It was never-ending..it's not the giving that's hard...it's all the damn paperwork...vitals non-stop.....needless to say I have a bad headache this morning. Plus..I had another fairly critical patient to care for. I know I'm maybe just not used to the fast paced CCU...but man....that was a lot of transfusions... I'm just wondering....kind of a poll....how many units of anything..PRBC's, FFP, etc...have you packed into one person on one shift.??????....the sad thing is...his hemoglobin is only up to 6.9...I just called because I forgot to chart something and the sup. said that they had just ordered another 4 units...wow!!! This guy apparently has a serious bleed. Ok...I was just curious...thanks for listening..

Snoop':kiss

Septic shock DIC, postops, GI bleeds, and liver failures can require multiple nonstop pushing of blood products. I've pushed 25 or more in my shift alone. Along with the inevitable multisystem failures to contend with, plus the rest of the unit. This is the challenge of ICU....handling it all and trying to pry reluctant doctors out of warm beds to come in and help. ;)

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