Today (Monday, June 14) is World Blood Donor Day, and, with local blood levels still at critically low levels, St. Tammany Health System’s Assistant Vice President of Outpatient and Diagnostic Services Melonie Lagalante teamed recently with blood bank specialist Elizabeth Callais to visit The Lake 94.5 studios in Covington to discuss the need for donations.
Listen to Melonie and Elizabeth’s discussion with The Lake morning host Charles Dowdy in the embedded audio player below or at The Lake website. You can also scroll down to read an edited transcript of their chat.
Charles Dowdy: All right, so we have got guests in the studio. We are talking about what?
Tim San Fillippo: We do, we are busting at the seams, from the cancer center to the new tower, and with that comes new needs or even expanded needs. So, I have my friends here from our blood department to talk about just the need for ongoing blood donations.
Charles: Alright, so Elizabeth Callais, did I say that correct? How are you?
Elizabeth Callais: I am fine.
Charles: Good, you got here early.
Elizabeth: I know. I have to be at work at 7, so ...
Charles: She is an early-to-work person. Give me your background real quick. How did you get involved in this?
Elizabeth: Well, I graduated from LSU in medical technology, worked several years as a generalist and then one time I was in charge of an inspection for the blood bank. The inspector said I did such a great job, had I ever thought about doing blood banking as a career instead of doing the general stuff. I thought about it, talked to my husband, found a school in Galveston, Texas – the University of Texas Medical Branch. Ended up moving there for a whole year, doing all my training just in the blood bank, learning everything that I needed to know and had to know and became a specialist in blood bank.
Charles: How cool is that? I would think the employment opportunities are good because you got to have it. You are never not going to be dealing with blood.
Elizabeth: That’s true. Can’t grow it on trees. You have got to get it from people.
Charles: Right, and that is what we are going to talk about today. That is kind of the effort we are making.
Elizabeth: That is correct. We have been struggling nationwide. One of the things is the COVID has really put a damper on our blood supply. That is why I am here today: to let people know that if you have had the COVID vaccine, you are eligible to donate. There is no reason you can not have the opportunity to help people. Also, if you have had the COVID itself, as long as you don’t have symptoms -- you have to wait 14 days after you have had symptoms – you can donate, too. There is a reason why we appreciate people who had COVID to donate – because they have antibodies, and those antibodies can help other patients. We have seen that happen in our hospital. We have been giving what we call COVID convalescent plasma to our patients, and it has helped turn them around and get them out of the hospital.
Charles: Ok, who is the stranger sitting next to you?
Elizabeth: Ah, this is Melonie Lagalante.
Charles: I thought I knew her! I haven’t seen her in so long. I obviously did something that offended her or something. I don’t know.
Melonie Lagalante: No, I am here Charles just to support Elizabeth. My responsibilities at the hospital include supervision of the laboratory. I am a layperson, and I want to say Elizabeth is really selling herself short in terms of her skills and what all the medical technologists in the laboratory do. They are really the unsung heroes of the hospital, especially the blood blank. It is such a critical position. When you have someone come in with a trauma or an emergency surgery, the blood bank is critical in supplying that blood to that procedure that is taking place. That is going to save the patient’s life. Our livelihood at the hospital really depends on the work that the blood bankers are doing. It is really just an impressive heroic effort that goes on every day in the laboratory.
Charles: Elizabeth was kind of selling herself short. You were kind of poo-pooing the whole thing, trying to downplay everything. So let’s talk about what you want to talk about. What are we talking about today?
Elizabeth: We are talking about World Blood Donor Day. The date of that is Monday, June 14, so we have paired up with the Blood Center and we are having a blood drive at St. Tammany, in the hospital. It is from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Monday. You can sign up if you go to thebloodcenter.org. There is a place where you can sign up to come and donate. They would like for you to sign up, but we will take walk-ins. Make sure you wear a mask, but if you have been fully vaccinated you may not need to use your mask. There are some instructions for that when you get there. The reason why we are doing this is that we want to raise awareness for the need of safe blood, and also we want to thank those donors who have been donating millions and millions of units of blood since time began. In 2020, the last statistic I have, is 118 million donations done worldwide. This is not just for the United States this is a worldwide date for everyone.
Charles: I don’t think about a hospital having shortages of anything, but you know the pandemic kind of taught us differently. I have had Liz in here from the Blood Center many times and she has talked at length about blood shortages. That is real in terms of your ability to treat patients, that matters.
Elizabeth: It does. We have been having difficulty during COVID while people are at home and they are staying home and working from home and they are not getting out. We are a 24/7 operation. We are still seeing sick patients. We are still seeing those cancer patients coming in every week or every two weeks for blood or blood products. So, yes, it has impacted us a lot. It is very sad to go walk in in the morning and find you’re kind of low.
Melonie: It is scary. Elizabeth shared a statistic with me over the break that one in seven patients coming into the hospital will require blood. So when your supply is limited or you have an emergency surgery where you might need seven units of blood for that one patient, that really eats into your supply. So we are monitoring our supply on a daily basis. We are very passionate and very vested in trying to get as many donations as we can – especially on World Donor Day on Monday.
Tim: One of the things that I didn’t think about and I would like to hear you elaborate a little bit more on (is that) in the last couple of weeks, we have been really excited about the new tower and the cancer center going online. But that is a huge draw on our blood supply, isn’t it?
Elizabeth: Yes, it will be. That is why we are out here today trying to promote blood donations.
Melonie: The majority of the beds in the new tower are expanded critical care beds, so those patients are at risk for needing blood more than the general population. Additionally, with us being a certified trauma center, the acuity of the patients coming to the hospital by ambulance has gone up significantly. That, too, puts a strain on our blood supply.
Charles: Talking to Elizabeth about World Blood Donor Day which is this Monday. So, if somebody shows up at the hospital (and wants to give blood), how does that work? What do they do?
Elizabeth: Well, we would prefer for you to go to the website thebloodcenter.org and register or preregister yourself and make an appointment. That would be great. However, if you can’t do that, walk in the front door. We just opened up a beautiful area for you to walk through. Make sure you wear your mask and then we will have directions to where you go to the Covington/Mandeville room. The hours of the donation are from 7 am to 4 pm. Make sure you bring an ID with you, because that is very important.
Charles: If I am coming in to do it. What is my in-and-out time, on average?
Elizabeth: On average, if you have an appointment and we know you are coming in, usually it is about a 45-minute time frame. From you being registered and going through all the questions and the pre things you have to go through like the hemoglobin, until you finish.
Charles: OK, and, again, I think we just can’t stress this enough. Let’s talk for a second more about how important this is. Because obviously a hospital, you guys you have got to have it. And we have been talking for months now that there has been a shortage.
Elizabeth: There is and it is kind of ironic that around 38% of the population of the United States is eligible to donate, but only 2% do. You are looking at this huge disparity in the amount of blood that we can take in, and when we talk about one in seven patients may need blood during their hospital stay, if you are over 60, you are likely to have to have blood products. You can see where there is a huge gap. Everyday we are trying to get people donate blood so that we can give it to our patients. Sometimes it is tough.
Melonie: You know, we are really proud at St. Tammany Health System that we have elevated the level of care that we provide, especially across the last decade, so really there is not a service that you would need that would cause you to have to leave the community. That is all the more reason why we are encouraging people to come and donate blood at our blood drive on Monday. That helps ensure our blood supply. So, in the event you had an emergency and were brought to our hospital, we could ensure that you would stay because we would have what we need to take care of you. We really hope people will come out. These blood donation days have been really well received in the community. I think the last time we had one in the spring, we had record level donations at the hospital. So, we know that the community will come out if they understand the need, and we hope that is the case on Monday.