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When smoke began pouring into the blood bank located on the third floor of The Ottawa Hospital’s General campus on Oct. 27, technologists grabbed the most precious things they could: units of blood products.
Melanie Tokessy, manager of transfusion medicine at the lab, was in her car on the way back from The Ottawa Hospital’s annual patient safety conference at the Infinity Centre in south Ottawa when she got the call about the fire at the hospital where she worked. There, they quickly set up a mini-blood bank in what would normally be used as a break room. With the blood products they rescued and reinforcements from the hospital’s Civic campus, they were able to resume their role, literally, as the life-blood of the hospital in the midst of an unfolding crisis.“One thing about people who work in the blood bank or in transfusion medicine is we take it so seriously that we are the stewards of the blood. We rarely waste any blood.
The next morning, Tokessy was among staff who arrived at 8 a.m. to begin disposing of those blood products — a painful task. In the days after the fire, the hospital’s supply was restocked by Canadian Blood Services and the Civic. No one was denied blood during the crisis, said Tokessy.
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