Reference Ranges for Red Blood Cells (Nursing)

00:01 Okay. Sometimes, when I look at a chart like this, it gets a little overwhelming.

00:05 So let me give you some tips.

00:07 Just start from the left and work your way over. Let's look at that first column, talking about red blood cell, hemoglobin, and hematocrit. Okay, cool.

00:15 We know those, right? We're familiar with those already.

00:19 Now I've got a red bar over there that says we actually measure these, and that's an important note we'll talk about in reference to the next slide.

00:26 But for now, know that we can measure the red blood cell, the hemoglobin, and the hematocrit.

00:31 Next column; Blood, Blood and Blood.

00:34 Right. That tells us where our sample is.

00:36 It's always important to know where your sample's coming from.

00:40 So we've got red blood cells, it's in the blood.

00:43 The value is 4.89.

00:46 Now there's something different in this one as compared to white blood cells.

00:50 Remember, white blood cells we talked about being 5-10, but that really represented 5,000-10,000.

00:56 When you see 4.89 here, that's not 4,000, that is 106, so that's 4,890,000 units.

01:08 Now still, healthcare professionals will report that as 4.89.

01:12 I just wanted you to know this is different than white cells. It's not thousand.

01:16 It's the millions of units there.

01:18 It's 106.

01:21 So the normal reference is 4-6.10.

01:24 So we have a value of 4.89.

01:27 Normal is 4-6.10. We're right on target.

01:31 Let's look at the next value. Hemoglobin.

01:34 All right? This is going to tell us about the oxygen-carrying capacity.

01:38 This is where you have 2 values to be familiar with.

01:41 It's different whether you're a male or a female.

01:44 Males have a higher hemoglobin range.

01:47 So they're 14-17.

01:49 Females are 12-15 for this particular lab.

01:53 So if we look at this, you'll notice we picked a value that was right in the middle.

01:57 So we don't need to know for sure if this is male or female.

01:59 We know that this is still normal, whether the patient is male or female.

02:04 Hematocrit is that percentage, right? The hematocrit is 45.2.

02:09 Now looking over to the right, again, we picked a number that was normal, whether they were male or female.

02:15 But when you see test questions or real patients, you'll need to know their gender to make sure that their H&H is within the normal reference range for their gender; male or female.

02:26 Now, I know we've talked about this before, but I want to keep reminding you.

02:30 I know that you have different textbook in nursing school and so the ranges are different in whatever textbook you're looking at, but the same thing happens in real practice.

02:38 Every lab may have a little bit different normal reference range.

02:43 The cool part, their normal reference for that particular lab will be listed right on your lab results.

02:49 So pay attention to that lab's normal references and you'll be fine.

02:53 And unlike nursing school, when you get tested on the normal ranges, when you're in real practice, every lab posts their normal ranges right next to your lab results.

03:03 Rock on. So that's awesome.

03:05 One less thing for you to memorize, but you'll know the general ranges.

03:09 Now, you'll see looking at this chart, looks pretty familiar, but now you see the blue bar that says "calculated." These are the values I talked about that you probably kind of looked at, but didn't really know what to do with them. That's okay.

03:24 I'm going to lay it out for you, so you'll be able to look at these and understand where they're coming from.

03:29 Okay, so MCV. These are all from the blood, right? A value of 92. That's within normal range.

03:36 When you look at each one of these values, you checked and reference it with a normal reference range.

03:41 MCH is 30.2.

03:44 Look at the normal reference range. You got it, 27-32. This is normal.

03:50 MCHC, 32.6.

03:53 Looks like it might be a little low, but it's still within the normal reference range.

03:58 Now we're looking at the RDW CV, 11.5 is still spot on for that percentage to be within the normal reference range.

04:07 Now, how useful was this going through this? If you don't know what MCV is or MCH or MC -- it's just letters.

04:15 Don't worry. This is just an example to introduce you to those and I wanted you to have the reference, so you know that these are calculated.

04:22 The previous slide we talked about, red blood cells and hemoglobin and hematocrit that are actually measured, these are drawn from calculations.

04:30 Now you'll never have to do the calculations because lab will do them for you.

04:34 But we'll break those down just a little bit later.