Anonymous wrote:A blood transfusion is actually a really routine and standard procedure that is unlikely to go wrong due to "operator error."
I'd like to hear a few more specifics from the poster claiming that the hospital lacked functional (what does that even mean?) transfusion capability in the OR. Before I blame a hospital
-- an RN who has never worked at Sibley
It was me--I'll try it get the medical terminology right, but forgive me if I don't. I had a arterial hematoma that burst through the vaginal wall leading to massive Hemorhage. The OB tried to sew it up in the delivery room but was utterly unsuccessful. My BP was too low to move me, so they gave me epi-something to get my heart beating more strongly then moved me to an OR. There was no blood warmer in the OR so they could not transfuse me. The anesthesiologist called a nurse to find one but it was taking too long, so he said he was going to go search ORs to try to find one and took off running. He did find one and I got 5 liters. The other problem was that they needed to call in a specialist (something like vascular intervention???) and it took hours for the guy to show up. The poor anesthesiologist kept calling and calling to ask where he was an when he would be there, and they just kept telling him within the hour. They did put foam into my arteries to stop the bleeding--luckily I was clotting okay, or I would not have made it until the guy showed up. Also, when the anesthesiologist first called for the specialist, they connected him to the wrong department and he had a farcical 5 minute conversation trying to figure out why they didn't understand what he was asking for, before he figured out it wasn't the right department even. It seemed pretty comical, largely because I was on massive amounts of pain killers that they had given me after the birth, when I kept complaining that the pain was getting worse.
They just seemed like a hospital that wasn't particularly prepared to deal with a lot of blood loss. I'm still here typing this, so it obviously wasn't catastrophic. I'm sure it's fine for most deliveries.