British man turned away from giving blood after refusing to answer if he was pregnant
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He's free to make any point he likes.
I'd rather have a well-stocked blood bank. His points are worthless when I've got a 2AM GSW on a Sunday morning, and I'm trying to figure out how in the hell I'm going to provide the surgeon enough compatible blood that A) I don't exhaust the supply for somebody else and B) I can provide enough to keep the patient's hgb levels to where the doc can live with it.
For those ends, I have no problem with a little underhanded subterfuge, if I can keep things within a certain range.
You need to have enough to work with. You also don't like to incinerate blood after it expires on the shelf.
It is a crappy feeling when you tell a doc you no longer have a compatible product for a patient who is bleeding to death.
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Now, a lot of that has changed with regional blood banks and push me-pull you inventory. Nowadays, we flow from excess inventory to need, and combined with the longer shelf life of the newer anticoagulants, less blood is wasted.
But back when we drew all of our own, we really worried about wasting it ...Although my boss had the biggest and most beautiful rose garden in town.
