Hello, med students.

My name is Zach Olson, and thank you for downloading this week's episode of the EM Clerkship Podcast.

I just listened to an excellent podcast by a critical care doctor named Scott Weingart, the M-Crit

podcast, where he interviewed the blood bank guy, another major

podcast, and it was excellent.

And I learned a ton.

And I realized that nobody had ever really explained how this blood stuff works.

So even in residency, I would just click random orders, type in screen, type in R.H, type and match, emergency release blood.

I would run around the resuscitation room being like, I need some blood now, but I didn't understand how it worked until a few weeks ago when I listened to that.

And then now I've been reading all about it.

And it's fascinating.

And so today I'm going to teach you what I learned.

I'm going to teach you some blood transfusion basics, what test to order in trauma, in GI bleeds, in severe anemia, in sepsis, whatever.

And we're going to talk about the four orders that you need to know.

Type in RH, type in screen, type and cross match in emergency release blood.

Type in RH, type in screen, type and cross match, emergency release.

I'm kind of assuming that we know the super basics of how this work.

People with O blood and negative RH factor, O negative, are the universal donor because there

aren't any antigens, any A's or Bs or RHs sitting on their cell surface that a body can react

against.

But for example, I'm a horrible blood donor.

I'm the rarest type, actually.

...