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Blood, Bytes, and Beyond
Insights on Blood Banking, Clinical Informatics, and Medical Education
About
My name is Caitlin Raymond
I'm a hybrid of training in Family Medicine and Pathology, currently focusing on Transfusion Medicine. I write about the blood bank, clinical informatics, and the process of medical education.
Vasovagal and Beyond: A Practical Guide to Blood Donor Reactions
Introduction Most blood donors walk out of the collection center with little more than a bandage and a juice box. But for a small subset,...
15 hours ago4 min read
8 views
Panreactivity and Paradox: A Warm Autoantibody Story
Warm autoantibodies (WAAs) are one of the most conceptually strange and serologically compelling phenomena in transfusion medicine. They...
6 days ago3 min read
25 views
Bloodless Doesn’t Mean Careless: Lessons from Patients Who Say No
When a patient refuses a blood transfusion, many clinicians feel backed into a corner. Sometimes, that refusal stems from deeply held...
Jun 13 min read
36 views
What’s In Your Algorithm? The Quiet Biases in Laboratory Standardization
I plugged in the numbers—height, weight, sex—and the algorithm spit out a total blood volume of 8 liters. Eight liters. That’s more than...
May 144 min read
17 views
Not Just a Test: How One Lab Innovation Saved Millions and Rewrote the Value Equation
In lab medicine, we’re often asked to prove our worth with narrow metrics—cost per test, turnaround time, test volume. But these siloed...
May 133 min read
45 views
Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Managing Peripartum Complications in the Blood Bank
Pregnancy is a physiological feat—but when complications arise, the blood bank becomes a lifeline. Managing peripartum complications...
May 84 min read
26 views
Tiny Patients, Big Questions: Rethinking Pediatric and Neonatal Transfusion Thresholds
When we talk about blood transfusions, most people picture adults — trauma victims, surgical patients, the critically ill. But what about...
May 44 min read
33 views
What Stewardship Looks Like at 2AM
At 2AM, the hospital feels like a different world. The corridors are dim and quiet. Most of the offices are dark. The cafeteria is...
Apr 223 min read
26 views
The Invisible Emotional Labor of Lab Medicine
At 3 a.m., the laboratory is quiet—but not still. Centrifuges hum. Blood cultures incubate. Analyzers click methodically. On the clinical...
Apr 173 min read
194 views
Why Doctors Should Tell Better Stories
In medicine, we are trained to reduce. “A 45-year-old man presents with chest pain.” “A febrile 6-year-old with no significant past...
Apr 164 min read
16 views
When the Blood Bank Says “No”: Clinical Judgment in the Face of Urgency
It usually starts with a phone call. A stat request for platelets. A patient with a dropping hemoglobin. A unit needed now —no...
Apr 132 min read
2,199 views
To the Student Who’s Thinking About Medicine While the World Burns
A letter about love, science, and the quiet power of staying human. Dear student, If you are thinking about medicine right now—while the...
Apr 33 min read
27 views
From Learner to Teacher—and Everything I Had to Unlearn
A story about learning to teach while learning everything else In medicine, we spend years learning how to learn—but almost no time...
Mar 304 min read
13 views
When Stem Cells Won’t Budge: The Art and Science of Mobilization
Imagine standing at the threshold of a medical breakthrough—a patient enrolled in a gene therapy protocol, the science ready, the hope...
Mar 234 min read
25 views
An Ode to the Long Road
To the ones who didn’t match — this one’s for you. I. The Experience of Not Matching You logged in. Your heart raced. And then came the...
Mar 233 min read
11 views
The Evolution of Blood Banking: From Leeches to Leukoreduction
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the best hope for curing a fever was letting your blood drip into a bowl. Today,...
Mar 225 min read
24 views
Neutrophils to the Rescue? Granulocyte Transfusions Explained – The Science, the Challenges, and the Controversy
When we think about blood components, red blood cells and platelets often steal the spotlight. But nestled within our bloodstream are...
Mar 204 min read
27 views
A Day in the Life of a Transfusion Medicine Pathologist
When most people think of pathology, they imagine a specialist behind a microscope, diagnosing diseases from tissue samples with little...
Mar 94 min read
45 views
Beyond Blood Typing: How Whole Genome Sequencing Could Transform Transfusion Medicine
Introduction Blood transfusion is a cornerstone of modern medicine, ensuring patients receive life-saving blood products tailored to...
Feb 265 min read
22 views
Point-of-Care Testing: Will It Replace Centralized Labs?
Introduction The landscape of diagnostic testing has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. Gone are the days when every lab...
Feb 226 min read
92 views
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