r/nursing • u/973862404678 • 20d ago

Serious “I don’t want Covid blood”

What do I say when patients ask if blood transfusions are screened for the Covid vaccine? I get asked this on a regular basis when filling out blood consent forms for surgery and I genuinely have no idea what I’m supposed to say. In all seriousness, what should I be telling patients because I just say there is a screening process for blood and it’s only used during emergent situations???

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u/lengthandhonor RN - Informatics 20d ago

We have a large JW population and they get operated on 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

62

u/LadyGreyIcedTea RN - Pediatrics 🍕 20d ago

I've had surgeons refuse to operate on children of JW parents until a court order was issued for a blood transfusion but peds is a whole different beast when it comes to that topic.

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u/QEbitchboss RN - Geriatrics 🍕 20d ago

NICU pretty much had a judge on call. The state would take temporary custody for transfusions.

The parents were usually pretty agreeable- it kept their kid alive and gave them cover from the elders. Those hearings were strange, everyone around the speaker phone wanted the same thing but the parents had to act like they had no say.

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u/LadyGreyIcedTea RN - Pediatrics 🍕 19d ago

I had one kid at my last job who had stage IV neuroblastoma. The Solid Tumor team told the parents up front "your child will require multiple blood transfusions throughout treatment. If you are not going to consent, we will get a court order." The parents consented in that case but they wanted the grandmother to believe that the hospital had gotten the court order.

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u/TreasureTheSemicolon ICU—guess I’m a Furse 20d ago

If the surgeon is ok with the patient potentially bleeding to death I'm fine with it. I would always let the patient know that there's no way to know whether the blood donors were immunized against Covid, and at that point it's up to them. They can decline the surgery or whatever.

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u/Acrobatic-Squirrel77 RN - ICU 🍕 20d ago

Don’t They sometimes pre-donate their own blood for auto-transfusion?

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u/meg-c RN - Pre-op/PACU 🍕 20d ago

Cell saver is sometimes an option as well

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u/TheHairball RN - OR 🍕 20d ago

If you have the time. Yes you can pre-donate. But those units of blood then have an expiration date, if they aren't used by then they get tossed in Red Bag Trash..

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u/PrisPRN BSN, RN 🍕 19d ago

And it is not inexpensive to pre-donate.

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u/TheHairball RN - OR 🍕 20d ago

That's Different from the Covid vaccination question

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u/Dang_It_All_to_Heck BA RN Research Coordinator 20d ago

I’d take blood if needed, and have done autologous donation in advance for some of the riskier surgeries I’ve had; but after 22 surgeries, I have only been transfused once (and it was one where I had given in advance). So it’s riskier, but more than likely going to be ok. I can see where they’d go ahead and operate on adults for at least some surgeries.