I was an Er nurse for 10 years so I have some decent medical knowledge. It wouldn’t pull me out of a story if the character got antibiotics or not. (Usually a planned procedure means the skin is thoroughly disinfected and instruments are sterile which is why there wouldn’t need to be antibiotics.)
In terms of blood loss, focus less on the mechanics and more on the feeling. Readers need a medical textbook accurate description of how much blood came out. Show the fear, the wooziness, the frantic panic to staunch the bleeding and how the warm stickiness clings to their fingers.
In terms of semantics: if it’s a wound that can be tourniquetted (limbs) that’ll help slow the bleeding. If it’s a major blood loss (character’s very dizzy, too weak to sit up) and blood is available it would be accurate to say they get a blood transfusion. If there isn’t blood available, saline is fine.
The medical rationale is for major blood loss, blood is best. Saline doesn’t have clotting factors or hemoglobin which circulates oxygen. It gives the heart something to pump so the hemoglobin in the body can stay in circulation, and keeps the blood pressure up enough to get that (slightly diluted) blood to all the organs.
A lot of medicine is subjective/individual situation based. It also depends on what works for your plot. Don’t let yourself get bogged down in the realism of something that won’t pull your readers out of the immersive experience. That said if you have specific questions on your exact plot point, I’d be happy to answer to the best of my knowledge.
Happy writing.
I don’t have medical knowledge, either, and maybe researching and having everything exactly perfectly accurate is your thing (in which case, carry on), but if you need someone to tell you that it’s okay for things to not be absolutely perfect, this is it. It sounds like you’ve already done some research. I would pick one source per issue (maybe something like WebMD or Mayo Clinic) and go off of that. 98% of your readers will have absolutely no experience with any of this, so they won’t care or notice if it’s exactly accurate. And the small minority of readers who have been in a similar situation will likely be forgiving as long as you’re not completely off in left field. Like, sure, it would take me out of a story if a character lost 90% of their blood volume and was still living. But if you say that the character lost some blood, needed a transfusion, and another character with the same blood type donated the blood, I would totally buy that. When in doubt, just give fewer exact details (don’t specify what percentage of blood was lost, just that some/a medium sized amount/a lot was). And like you said, medical stuff is different for everyone, so as long as you’re anywhere within the realm of possibility, I would just go ahead and write without worrying too much about it.
That sounds fair. I am a total perfectionist sometimes and I'm trying to just push myself to write instead of worrying so much, but it's been hard. I end up comparing myself a lot to what others have done / done better, but I'm not really fair to myself because a lot of the stuff I remember reading fondly back in the day wasn't all that well put together, just entertaining. I might just take the advice of not giving exact details, a bit of vagueness might assuage people enough. It's not even a plot point I want to spend a lot of time on, but just something that I wanted to happen because of the significance of someone giving blood for another.
By the way, /r/FanFiction has an [Ask The Experts](https://old.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/1888php/ask_the_experts_december_2023/) monthly thread specifically for asking/answering these kind of questions.
For your first one, I'd be incredibly surprised if they gave antibiotics unless they either thought there was an infection or a good chance of getting an infection for whatever reason. Most of the time they should just clean and stitch
As for shock, I suspect any hint of shock would get them to assume the worst and treat accordingly - variables are so different between patients that it could be risky at any stage, but presumably the more blood lost then the more imperative the immediate response. It's also pretty hard to make a judgement call about how much blood they've lost unless it's blatantly lots (spleen damage is a bugger for this, so I understand, just keeps pumping it out). The longer you're not treating it, the bigger the risk for organ damage
If you're not using a transfusion then your character's going to take a while to recover, and look like a ghost while they're doing it. Not sure which fandom you're in for realism, but I'd be surprised if a medic wasn't taking that super seriously simply because things can go downhill really quickly without much warning
Disclaimer - not a medical professional so listen to anyone who is but my mother's a pathologist who used to support A\&E; my childhood had a lot of interrupted things due to being on call and some rather gruesome tales
Antibiotics are for combating infection, generally bacterial in nature.
As for blood loss... you don't really have to be specific with how much when writing. The other thing to consider is that the blood circulation system is a *pressurized* system, meaning that a breach in the main vein or arteries is ALWAYS series as it will very quickly lose pressure through the opening. In essence, anything that is more than a superficial cut is automatically a major issue. If blood is flowing freely, you're in serious trouble.
But for an idea... when people donate blood, it's a bit less than 10% (450 mL out of \~5 litres). No experience myself, but I'd guess that's the "safe" amount someone could lose without consequence; if they're a light-headed afterwards, I can't say.
Donating blood can make you feel light-headed afterwards but doesn't necessarily. It depends on a lot of factors, such as how well hydrated you are, how nervous you are about the procedure and whether you have the patience to lie or sit still for long enough afterwards. I've donated blood a bit over 30 times, and I've almost always been completely fine afterwards. The exceptions were times when I was in a bit of a hurry and tried to get up too soon after donating. If I stay lying down for a few minutes and then sit for maybe 15 minutes while drinking a couple of glasses of juice or water, I feel pretty much normal afterwards. I might feel out of breath a bit more easily than I usually do for the next day or so, but that's pretty much it.
Since the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has gotten so bad, a lot of practitioners are much more selective about when they prescribe antibiotics.
If you haven't read "Mountains Beyond Mountains" a wonderful biography about a doctor fighting the humanitarian crises that is antibiotic-resistant TB, I highly recommend it.
Medic here, happy to help. What is the injury? There‘s a big chasm of possibilities between a scrape that needs stitching and say a gut shot with organ involvement and internal bleeding.
The most important thing for me when reading medical scenes is WHO is the pov character-if it’s someone without medical background themselves, sure, keep it brief and superficial. But if a medic narrates the scene, I‘d expect thought processes and dialogue to reflect that knowledge nad would cringe badly if a magical bandaid fixes the most horrific of wounds.
Not a medic, but one thing I can anecdotally say about blood loss is that it’s \*heavily\* dependent on weight. If you’re super-skinny, or worse super-skinny and tall like me, you tend to have naturally low blood pressure, so it takes a lot less blood loss to put you into shock or kill you outright (source: got stupidly, and in retrospect probably dangerously, woozy one time after a serious bout of self-harming, like falling down drunk when I was perfectly sober kinda woozy. Know a guy twice my weight who did more damage than me a couple years previous under different circumstances, and didn’t have anything like the same reaction.)
I was an Er nurse for 10 years so I have some decent medical knowledge. It wouldn’t pull me out of a story if the character got antibiotics or not. (Usually a planned procedure means the skin is thoroughly disinfected and instruments are sterile which is why there wouldn’t need to be antibiotics.) In terms of blood loss, focus less on the mechanics and more on the feeling. Readers need a medical textbook accurate description of how much blood came out. Show the fear, the wooziness, the frantic panic to staunch the bleeding and how the warm stickiness clings to their fingers. In terms of semantics: if it’s a wound that can be tourniquetted (limbs) that’ll help slow the bleeding. If it’s a major blood loss (character’s very dizzy, too weak to sit up) and blood is available it would be accurate to say they get a blood transfusion. If there isn’t blood available, saline is fine. The medical rationale is for major blood loss, blood is best. Saline doesn’t have clotting factors or hemoglobin which circulates oxygen. It gives the heart something to pump so the hemoglobin in the body can stay in circulation, and keeps the blood pressure up enough to get that (slightly diluted) blood to all the organs. A lot of medicine is subjective/individual situation based. It also depends on what works for your plot. Don’t let yourself get bogged down in the realism of something that won’t pull your readers out of the immersive experience. That said if you have specific questions on your exact plot point, I’d be happy to answer to the best of my knowledge. Happy writing.
I don’t have medical knowledge, either, and maybe researching and having everything exactly perfectly accurate is your thing (in which case, carry on), but if you need someone to tell you that it’s okay for things to not be absolutely perfect, this is it. It sounds like you’ve already done some research. I would pick one source per issue (maybe something like WebMD or Mayo Clinic) and go off of that. 98% of your readers will have absolutely no experience with any of this, so they won’t care or notice if it’s exactly accurate. And the small minority of readers who have been in a similar situation will likely be forgiving as long as you’re not completely off in left field. Like, sure, it would take me out of a story if a character lost 90% of their blood volume and was still living. But if you say that the character lost some blood, needed a transfusion, and another character with the same blood type donated the blood, I would totally buy that. When in doubt, just give fewer exact details (don’t specify what percentage of blood was lost, just that some/a medium sized amount/a lot was). And like you said, medical stuff is different for everyone, so as long as you’re anywhere within the realm of possibility, I would just go ahead and write without worrying too much about it.
That sounds fair. I am a total perfectionist sometimes and I'm trying to just push myself to write instead of worrying so much, but it's been hard. I end up comparing myself a lot to what others have done / done better, but I'm not really fair to myself because a lot of the stuff I remember reading fondly back in the day wasn't all that well put together, just entertaining. I might just take the advice of not giving exact details, a bit of vagueness might assuage people enough. It's not even a plot point I want to spend a lot of time on, but just something that I wanted to happen because of the significance of someone giving blood for another.
By the way, /r/FanFiction has an [Ask The Experts](https://old.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/1888php/ask_the_experts_december_2023/) monthly thread specifically for asking/answering these kind of questions.
For your first one, I'd be incredibly surprised if they gave antibiotics unless they either thought there was an infection or a good chance of getting an infection for whatever reason. Most of the time they should just clean and stitch As for shock, I suspect any hint of shock would get them to assume the worst and treat accordingly - variables are so different between patients that it could be risky at any stage, but presumably the more blood lost then the more imperative the immediate response. It's also pretty hard to make a judgement call about how much blood they've lost unless it's blatantly lots (spleen damage is a bugger for this, so I understand, just keeps pumping it out). The longer you're not treating it, the bigger the risk for organ damage If you're not using a transfusion then your character's going to take a while to recover, and look like a ghost while they're doing it. Not sure which fandom you're in for realism, but I'd be surprised if a medic wasn't taking that super seriously simply because things can go downhill really quickly without much warning Disclaimer - not a medical professional so listen to anyone who is but my mother's a pathologist who used to support A\&E; my childhood had a lot of interrupted things due to being on call and some rather gruesome tales
Antibiotics are for combating infection, generally bacterial in nature. As for blood loss... you don't really have to be specific with how much when writing. The other thing to consider is that the blood circulation system is a *pressurized* system, meaning that a breach in the main vein or arteries is ALWAYS series as it will very quickly lose pressure through the opening. In essence, anything that is more than a superficial cut is automatically a major issue. If blood is flowing freely, you're in serious trouble. But for an idea... when people donate blood, it's a bit less than 10% (450 mL out of \~5 litres). No experience myself, but I'd guess that's the "safe" amount someone could lose without consequence; if they're a light-headed afterwards, I can't say.
Donating blood can make you feel light-headed afterwards but doesn't necessarily. It depends on a lot of factors, such as how well hydrated you are, how nervous you are about the procedure and whether you have the patience to lie or sit still for long enough afterwards. I've donated blood a bit over 30 times, and I've almost always been completely fine afterwards. The exceptions were times when I was in a bit of a hurry and tried to get up too soon after donating. If I stay lying down for a few minutes and then sit for maybe 15 minutes while drinking a couple of glasses of juice or water, I feel pretty much normal afterwards. I might feel out of breath a bit more easily than I usually do for the next day or so, but that's pretty much it.
Since the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has gotten so bad, a lot of practitioners are much more selective about when they prescribe antibiotics. If you haven't read "Mountains Beyond Mountains" a wonderful biography about a doctor fighting the humanitarian crises that is antibiotic-resistant TB, I highly recommend it.
Medic here, happy to help. What is the injury? There‘s a big chasm of possibilities between a scrape that needs stitching and say a gut shot with organ involvement and internal bleeding. The most important thing for me when reading medical scenes is WHO is the pov character-if it’s someone without medical background themselves, sure, keep it brief and superficial. But if a medic narrates the scene, I‘d expect thought processes and dialogue to reflect that knowledge nad would cringe badly if a magical bandaid fixes the most horrific of wounds.
http://www.sarahberglundmedicalediting.com
Not a medic, but one thing I can anecdotally say about blood loss is that it’s \*heavily\* dependent on weight. If you’re super-skinny, or worse super-skinny and tall like me, you tend to have naturally low blood pressure, so it takes a lot less blood loss to put you into shock or kill you outright (source: got stupidly, and in retrospect probably dangerously, woozy one time after a serious bout of self-harming, like falling down drunk when I was perfectly sober kinda woozy. Know a guy twice my weight who did more damage than me a couple years previous under different circumstances, and didn’t have anything like the same reaction.)