Introduction
You are a team of doctors from XX Hospital who have mixed up bags of donated blood before labelling them! Now in your groups, you need to figure out, using your scientific knowledge and inquiry skills, how to identify and correctly label the bags of blood before they are used for a transfusion!
Task
You will make use of your scientific knowledge of blood types and transfusions to correctly identify the bags of blood so that they can be properly used for blood transfusion! There will questions highlighted on the page, fill in your answers on the Padlet discussion for the lesson!
Process
The Scenario
It is two hours before an important surgery and you have realised that you were given a few unlabelled bags of blood for the surgery. You do not have much time left, what should you do to correctly identify the blood type of each bag of blood? Thankfully, one of your teammates is very knowledgeable about blood types. He first shares some of his knowledge on blood types:
| Blood Group | Antigen on Red Blood Cell | Antibody in Serum |
|---|---|---|
| A | Antigen A | Antibody A |
| B | Antigen B | Antibody B |
| AB | Antigen A and B | No antibodies |
| O | No antigen | Antibodies A and B |
He asks you: "What do you think will happen if we mix up the bags of blood? What will happen if a bag of Blood type A blood is transfused into a patient with blood type B? [Q1] What if a bag of Blood type AB blood is transfused into a patient with blood type O? [Q2]"
[You can look for additional information online/in your textbook and record your responses in Padlet!]
You manage to answer his question adequately and now your team understands the importance of properly identifying the different bags of blood. After listening to the conversation, one of your teammates manage to come up with a brilliant idea:
"Why don't we make use of the above knowledge to test out the different bags of blood? We can then lay out a drop of each sample in a tray and add in a drop of their respective anti-serum to the samples? If it coagulates then we know that they are incompatible and we can thus determine their blood type! My friend made a quick Youtube video to demonstrate the process. Here, let me show all of you!"
Your team decides to use the above method to determine the blood type of each bag of blood! Before the testing, you decide to tabulate a list of compatible and incompatible blood types to help in your identification of the blood bags! Fill up the blanks in the table below! [Q3]
[In your groups, copy and paste the tables and fill in the blanks! You are encouraged to look up the information online and from your textbooks!]
| Recipient's Blood Group | Antibody in Recipient's plasma | A (Antigen A) | B (Antigen B) | AB (Antigen A and B) | O (No antigen) |
|
A |
b |
|
|
+ |
|
|
B |
|
+ |
|
|
- |
|
AB |
|
- |
|
|
- |
|
O |
a and b |
|
+ |
|
|
+: Agglutination, blood groups are incompatible
-: No agglutination, blood groups are compatible
During the process of testing, one of your teammates recalled that people with O blood group are considered universal donors and people with AB blood groups are known as universal acceptors. Why? [Q4, discuss with your teammates and post your responses on Padlet!]
Finally, you managed to begin the testing of the different blood bags. After one and a half-hour of brainstorming and testing, you have successfully sorted out the different blood bags, just in time for the surgery. The whole team heaves a sigh of relief and gets ready for the surgical procedure.
Evaluation
All of the responses to the questions will be collated on Padlet and will be shown to the class after the assigned time period for discussion.
Conclusion
By now, you would have learnt about the various blood types as well as agglutination. Hopefully, you will be able to grasp the significance of correctly labelling bags of blood as well as the specificity of the process of transfusion. Make sure you look up for sufficient information and post your responses on the class Padlet page!
Credits
Prepared by:
Toh Kai Wei, Clarence
Student Teacher, NIE Singapore
For Course Module AED20C: Technologies for Meaningful Learning
With reference to:
Teacher Page
This project/WebQuest was created to demonstrate the capabilities of ICT in facilitating Biology Education.