Understanding Consent for Blood Transfusion: What Patients Need to Know

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The updated guidelines strengthen your rights as a patient to understand blood transfusions. Transfusions can be lifesaving, and they are extremely safe in the United Kingdom thanks to improvements in modern practices and processes, but all treatments carry risks. The Infected Blood Inquiry report 2024 raised concerns if people had received transfusions with their full knowledge or consent. To make a well-informed decision about your healthcare, you should clearly understand the risks, benefits and alternatives.

Key Points:

Informed Consent means that your healthcare team must explain why you should receive a transfusion, the benefits and risks as well as other possible options. You must have the ability to understand this information, use it to weigh options, and communicate your choice of whether you agree to the transfusion (informed consent) or not (refusal).
Shared Decision-Making should include your medical team encouraging you to ask questions, to express concerns, and to be involved in choosing your treatment. After receiving a transfusion, you can no longer donate blood in the United Kingdom.
Documentation is essential. Your healthcare team needs to record discussions and your decision about transfusion in your medical records, ideally electronically, making it easy to find for other hospital staff.
Refusal of Transfusion is your right. You should ask your healthcare team about alternatives to carefully weight up options. If you do not want to receive transfusions or parts of blood, your healthcare team must respect your decision and clearly document this decision in your medical records.
Emergency Situations: If you are unconscious or unable to consent, medical teams may proceed with a transfusion to save your life. Afterwards, they must inform you and document the transfusion in your medical records.
Children and Young Adults: As a child or young adult, your parents/guardians and care team should involve you in the decision about receiving a blood transfusion, if reasonable, until you are allowed to make your own treatment decisions (until you are about 16 or 17 years old).
Ongoing Consent: If you need transfusions regularly, your healthcare team will review your consent with you from time to time or if your situation changes. You can ask your healthcare team to review it anytime.
Training: Healthcare professionals must be well trained to discuss benefits, risks and alternatives of transfusions with you before asking for your agreement.
Patient Resources: NHS leaflets and online materials can help you to better understand transfusions and support you to make a well-informed decision.

These guidelines support your right as a patient to understand, choose and review blood transfusion as part of your healthcare.

Read the full guidelines published on 9 September 2025.

More information about blood transfusion:

NHS blood transfusion information is available in 25 languages, easy read and audio versions and text compatible with screen reading software. You can find this information on the transfusion guidelines website.

You can ask your healthcare team:

to verbally explain the transfusion process,
for an interpreter or use free services like NHS 111 for telephone interpreter support.

About the safety of transfusion:

Blood transfusions are a common and safe treatment for patients in the United Kingdom. Serious complications are extremely rare because all donated blood is thoroughly tested and multiple safety checks during the transfusion process.

Complications can happen a few hours, days or even weeks after having a blood transfusion. If you experience side effects (mild allergic reactions, fever), ask for an urgent GP appointment or call 111. Tell them you had a recent blood transfusion.

Immediately call 999 if:

you have severe difficulty breathing
your mouth or throat is tingling or swelling
you have chest pain

Tell them you recently had a blood transfusion.

To help monitor your safety during a transfusion, you can

speak up in case staff don't check your ID,
provide your medical history, and
report any unusual symptoms during and after the transfusion to your healthcare team.

Find more information on the NHS website.

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