top of page
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.
When the Cure Contributes to the Problem: Iatrogenic Anemia in Critical Care
In the intensive care unit, we often reach for blood tests as our window into the body’s response to critical illness. But what happens...
4 days ago4 min read
More Than the Blood Bank: The Transfusion Medicine Physician as a Clinical Consultant
Introduction: When most people—doctors included—think of transfusion medicine, they picture someone approving blood products from a...
Jun 282 min read
Just Passing Through: On Training, Transition, and Everything that Doesn’t Last
In just a few short weeks, I’ll finish fellowship. It’s not my first goodbye — far from it. But it’s the first one that might be my last....
Jun 222 min read
My Cat Has Better Healthcare Than I Do
James is a 20-pound tabby with a big personality and, until recently, a very small urethra. A few weeks ago, he ended up in the emergency...
Jun 203 min read
Making ECP Work for Kids: Practical Guidance for GVHD Treatment
Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) is an immunomodulatory therapy increasingly used in the management of acute and chronic...
Jun 144 min read
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,...
Jun 94 min read
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...
Jun 43 min read
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
bottom of page