About this deal
Under the new arrangement announced in 2004, the elders would only have to make one thorough sweep of the congregation members to insure their permanent compliance and eliminate this hugely embarrassing situation. Beginning in 2004, the Watchtower announced a major change in how the blood card was to be issued as shown below:
Note the level of alarm sounded by the Watchtower Society because one card was approximately five years old and more than half were unsigned, not witnessed or out of date. The reports certainly call into question the degree of support among Jehovah’s Witnesses for the blood policy.Finally! Someone who answered my original question! Thank you! I made a copy of your reply and plan to use it along with statements from some of our floor nurses who really do just happen to appreciate the band system. They feel it makes them more secure. Yeah, it's true.
Your hospital has invested time and resources to perfect its blood transfusion protocols to deliver superior patient care. However, a single patient or blood misidentification error can have serious or even fatal results. According to the FDA, there is an average of 414 transfusion errors in the U.S. each year. One of the top National Patient Safety Goals established by the Joint Commission is to eliminate transfusion errors related to patient identification. The PDC line of blood bands and systems can help. Whether whole or fractional, one’s own or someone else’s, transfused or injected, it is wrong.”– The Watchtower 09/15/1961 p. 559 The “No Blood Card” that Jehovah’s Witnesses carry has experienced significant changes over the years, as you will see in this article. It was simply referred to as “the blood card” for many decades, then came to be called “the Advanced Medical Directive”. Another major change occurred in 2004, when it was combined with a Durable Power of Attorney specific to each state and is at times referred to as the “DPA”. To Penny: the only solvent reason to get rid of the blood bank armband is if you can rely on all of your phlebotomists and transfusionists to accurately identify the patient and the sample and the blood product using only the hospital armband (preferably 100% of the time...). Our nurses have proven that they respect the blood bank armband slightly more than the hospital armband (which is to say not much), but with the blood bank band we have a somewhat better chance of catching them at it when they don't. We are going to 100% use of the blood bank armband because it helps us to catch more errors. We used to require that they hand write the medical record number on the tube from the hospital bracelet (the only place they could get it from in the room), but JC killed that process by announcing that we were causing them to make errors. In truth, we were catching WBIT by seeing the wrong medical record number on the label. This is not to say that they could not obtain the medical record number by returning to the nursing station and looking it up in the medical record or on the computer...
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The current blood card, or “Medical Directive” is no longer able to make the same uncompromising statement. Why? Because the Society has gradually modified its once firm position, and now allows every part of the blood to be transfused or injected if sufficiently fractionated. A doctrine that made little sense to begin with, now makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Are you still carrying this document in your wallet? If so, why? It may well become a warrant for your untimely death. Children of Jehovah’s Witnesses, though not even baptized, are called upon to carry a similar card: I have no dog in this fight about JW and religious beliefs. Bible is very clear that the original sin was judgement. All choices are conscience. We all pay the cost of our choice. A personal religious choice is equally as valid as a patriot sacrifice. I personally am not going to die for old bankers fighting over oil, while standing under a colorful sheet blowing in the wind, but to each their own beliefs. Ferraris, V. A., Davenport, D. L., Saha, S. P., Austin, P. C., Zwischenberger, J. B. (2012) Surgical outcomes and transfusion of minimal amounts of blood in the operating room. Archives of Surgery, 147(1), 49-55. Retrieved from http://www.uthsc.edu/Internal/syllabus-consult/transfusion_minimal_blood.pdf The red crosses immense profit from volunteered blood is also something worth reviewing to provide a balanced perspective do people can make an informed decision and then be respected to make the own bodily autonomous decisions without being judged.