Blood Donation
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Blood Donation
John Donaghy (Paramedic) gives expert video advice on: Do you use blood on the scene of an emergency?; How important is it for people to give blood?
Do you use blood on the scene of an emergency?
No, not blood, not whole blood. We use plasmas and various fluids, but we don't use whole blood on the scene of an emergency. We just use various fluids to replace volume involved in blood.
How important is it for people to give blood?
Giving blood is ultimately important. Obviously, we need blood to survive. We pick up many patients day in and day out that we know are going to need life saving blood. They're going to need the plasma's, the proteins of blood to survive and if they don't get them ,they wouldn't survive. We can only give them fluid as sort of an expander, so the blood they've got will last a little bit longer, if you like - that's a way of looking at it. But it's not blood replacement, so they need blood.