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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 transfusion medicine physician with roots in both family medicine and pathology. I write about blood banking, clinical informatics, and what it means to learn, teach, and work in medicine.
Fresh Frozen Facts, Part II: FFP Is Not a Vitamin
This is the second post in my four-part series on plasma products — what they are, when to use them, and why they’re so often...
Jul 15, 20254 min read
Fresh Frozen Facts, Part I: Know Your Plasma
This post kicks off a four-part series on plasma transfusion — starting with the types of plasma products and how they differ. In...
Jul 14, 20253 min read
A Bad System Beats a Good Person Every Time
Some of the most meaningful things I built this year weren’t papers or presentations or new protocols. They were systems. Templates....
Jul 11, 20252 min read
Floaties, the Deep End, and Becoming a Doctor: You Will Never Feel Ready—Do It Anyway
This week, I handed off the call phone to a new fellow. I walked her through the MTP protocol, gave her a holy book of transfusion...
Jul 9, 20252 min read
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...
Jul 4, 20254 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 28, 20252 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 22, 20252 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 20, 20253 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 14, 20254 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 9, 20254 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 4, 20253 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 1, 20253 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 14, 20254 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 13, 20253 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 8, 20254 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 4, 20254 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 22, 20253 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 17, 20253 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 16, 20254 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 13, 20252 min read
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