Since I can’t stay out of trouble at work…because 1) its just way too boring if I do and 2) being a new nurse just invites trouble…Of course I have a story about my shift tonight.
One of my lovely co-workers asked me to help her hang a blood product since she had never had this experience before…
And of course thanks to one of my patients…I have quickly become a pro at hanging blood…so being my nice self…I graciously agreed to help…
The other nurse pre-medicated the pt with Benadryl and then went down to the blood bank to get the blood. The tech took the pre-blood vital signs…and we were ready to go.
We compared the information from the blood, with the blood paper. We gathered the Normal Saline and the blood tubing…(we even made sure to make sure it was legitimate blood tubing…with 2 spikers). We were on a roll.
So naturally we spiked the normal saline and flushed out the tubing. We were then ready to go to the patient’s room, and compare the arm band with the unit of blood. All this vital information matched…nothing was going to stop us now.
The nurse spiked the bag of blood and flushed the line…she then started the infusion, and wrote down the time of initiation. We then reviewed what she was going to assess for in the first 15 minutes…any signs and symptoms of a transfusion reaction (including…rash, back pain, fever, feeling of doom). I then left the patient’s room to go about the rest of my nightly duties…
Of course the story doesn’t end there…it wouldn’t be a typical “me” story if it did. Along comes the clinical nurse expert…she was checking in on us since it was the other nurse’s first time. My fellow nurse reassured the expert we were fine and we had this…then the expert asked a question… “Is there consent in the chart?” “SAY WHAT!!!???”
Probably one of the most important part of the process and both of us had totally forgotten to even think about the consent. I think at this moment…both of our hearts jumped out of our chests and we just looked at the expert in sheer panic…
She laughed at us and went on to calm us down. After looking in the chart, we felt much better, seeing as how the consent was already signed and in the chart.
“Phew…I guess I get to keep my job for a little bit longer! Thank goodness!!!”
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