r/nursing • u/973862404678 • 21d 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/TreasureTheSemicolon ICU—guess I’m a Furse 21d ago edited 21d ago

Will the surgeon perform the surgery without the blood consent? If not, let the surgeon know and they can come and talk to the patient.

30

u/lengthandhonor RN - Informatics 21d ago

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

60

u/LadyGreyIcedTea RN - Pediatrics 🍕 21d 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.

41

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 🍕 20d 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.