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Good Morning- I have attended the UBS course, and have found it extremely valuable. I am a blood bank manager and we do NOT have either a TSO position in our hospital, nor have we a formal blood management program. I used the knowledge I gained to empower transfusion committee to push for several blood management strategies to be implemented, and our organization is realizing great benefits since I attended the class in Sep 2014. We have reduced transfusions by over 50% and are still realizing continued reductions 14 months later. We are predominantly orthopedics based, and after a presentation to our arthroplasty group this past fall, we are in the process of writing/publishing our process improvement project as best practices in orthopedics. The class was comprised of~50% each RN's and Blood Bank supervisors/managers, and there were sessions included to help each background learn/understand each other's roles and what they bring to a TSO position. The rest of the class is very good as well---highly technical and indepth in many subjects despite the actual brevity of the full course. Strong BB, donor collection, and quality tools is helpful as the course does help push you to the next level. My belief is the best background for the TSO'---IF the basis of your program is to also advocate for strong blood management processes to be employed, can be either professional background as long as they are set to colloborate well between BB and various medical disciplines, because without their buy in, the benefits of a trememdous amount of hard work that needs to be put in, may wind up being minimal/unsustainable. Just one colleagues journey--hope it helps and if anyone has more questions on the course or how I used the lessons learned, I'm happy to try to help!

That is exactly what I was hoping to hear Linda ! Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. I will definitely be putting in a request to go next year.

We only allow 2 units of anything at once if: Massive bleed and using a rapid infuser. Actively bleeding with two IV sites to give units simultaneously. Otherwise, give one and let us know when you need the second.

They drew the line at me making nametags for their foreheads.

By the way, welcome to this fantastic site mld123; you'll love it!

Yes, we always draw our own before transfusing. Office lab said they had a 7 Hgb, ours was 11.5. So we didn't transfuse him; I spoke to the office and asked if their QC was in and they said "what's that?". Needless to say we got a call later that day saying that their machine was "down" until it could be fixed and could they send us their CBCs.