Dosage Calc, part 29: Maternity Nursing - Calculating Blood Loss

Hi, I'm Cathy with Love Love RN. In this video, I'm going to show you how to calculate blood loss following childbirth. You can find all the information that I'll be covering in this video in our Level Up RN dosage calculation workbook. If you are in nursing school, then you know how important it is to master dosage calculations. And our workbook will help you do just that. In a nutshell, our workbook contains all the different types of dosage calculation problems that you are likely to encounter in nursing school, and we demonstrate how to solve each problem using multiple methods so you can pick the way that makes the most sense to you.

Hemorrhage is a serious and life-threatening complication following childbirth. Therefore, assessment of blood loss, as the nurse, is going to be essential for the postpartum patient. And you will get a more accurate measurement of blood loss by weighing the patient's blood-soaked perineal pad as opposed to just visually examining the pad. So if you take the weight of the blood-soaked perineal pad and subtract out the weight of the dry perineal pad, you will get the grams of blood loss. And then you need to remember that 1 gram equals 1 milliliter of blood. All right. So let's take a look at our example up here. Following a C-section at 0735, so 7:35 AM, the nurse charts 750 milliliters of blood loss during delivery. Over the remainder of the shift, the following weights of blood-soaked perineal pads were noted for the postpartum patient. At 8 o'clock, they had 80 grams; at 10 o'clock, 64 grams; at noon, 40 grams. And at 1500, they had 38 grams. And at 1700, they had 39 grams. The weight of the dry perineal pad used by the patient is 27 grams. What is the estimated blood loss in milliliters, so underline that, for the patient during the nurse's shift from 0700 to 1900?

Okay. So we know that our patient, right out of the gate, had 750 milliliters of blood loss from their C-section. And now we need to take the weight of their blood-soaked perineal pads, subtract out the weight of the dry perineal pad to get the blood loss for each of these times. So at 0800, our patient's pad weighed 80 grams. If we subtract out the weight of the dry perineal pad, we get 53 grams. Then at 10 o'clock, our patient's pad weighs 64 grams. So again, if we subtract out the weight of the dry pad, we end up with 37 grams. And then at noon, our patient's pad weighed 40 grams, subtract out 27 grams, and we get 13 grams. And then at 1500, the pad weighed 38 grams. If we subtract out the 27 grams, we end up with 11 grams. And then finally, at 1700, that pad weighed 39 grams. So if we subtract out 27 grams, the weight of the dry perineal pad, we end up with 12 grams. So I think we got them all. One, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five.

Okay. So if we add all of these grams together, we end up with 126 grams. And we know that 126 grams equals 126 milliliters of blood here. So to calculate the total blood loss in milliliters, I need to take that 750 mLs and add in this 126 mLs. And I end up with 876 mLs of estimated blood loss for the shift. Because all of these times are between the nurse's shift from 0700 to 1900. So that would be the answer to this problem.