It's been years since we organised the very first emergency wing training - but it still is as refreshing and as enchanting as it used to be. The send half of 2nd October was well spend with the emergency team decoding the intricacies of blood and emergency request handling. Each year the emergency team gets its own quota of new volunteers. Gradually these volunteers transition from people who do not know what to do when someone needs blood into people who can help with the most critical blood requests. It requires immense effort to learn, understand and ask.
In order to accelerate the transition, we organise periodic emergency wing trainings. The purpose of these trainings is to capacity build the volunteers to clearly understand the intricacies behind blood transfusion. This helps them better understand the requests which come to them and propose more suitable solution. Few of the topics discussed in the emergency wing training today were:
- Purpose of the emergency team and role of the emergency volunteer in managing blood requests
- Blood grouping - The ABO and the Rh systems - antigens and antibodies
- Blood constituents
- Blood components
- Blood group matching
- Assessing the urgency of blood request
- Transfusion reactions
- Managing platelets requests for Dengue
- Single donor platelets vs Random donor platelets
- Night time blood requests
In subsequent weeks the volunteers will build a firm grasp on these concepts by the review of the blood requests they take and also by the bi-weekly discussions in the team. And hopefully, a few months down the line, they will join the queue of the several volunteers who today stood nodding while they heard the concepts they have assimilated fully well one more time.
As for me, the sheer joy of decoding blood transfusion medicine for committed, enthusiastic young people - priceless!