Danielle Anderson and LifeSouth

Danielle Anderson, a phlebotomist at Lifesouth, came to our class on October 22 to talk about giving blood, the importance and need for blood in our community, blood types, and how to palpate a vein and apply a tourniquet. There are eight key blood types with O positive being the most average (at 39%). 0 negative is the universal donor and type AB-positive blood is called the "universal recipient". They average on needing about 900 units (or pints) of blood a day with only 3% of the population donating. The shelf-life of the parts of the blood is red (48 days), white (5 days), and plasma can be flash frozen for up to a year. Tourniquets(to stop bleeding) can be used to squeeze and palpate a large vein to use for extracting blood for donation. It is important to donate blood, because there is no substitution for blood and one person can save up to three lives!