Leaderboard

I would use the Autoprint functionality with caution as having unsolicited labels print remotely easily leads to misidentification of patient samples.

We only type for the actual antigen corresponding to the patient's antibody for anything other than Rh. For those Rh antibodies, we will type for the C, c and E as appropriate genetic-inheritance wise, as you described above. We don't typically type for e unless the patient has an e antibody (to prove it's creation) or is E positive (checking for heterozygosity), since 98% of people are e positive (we assume e pos unless given reason to check that). We would do a full pheno with whatever sera we have in house (pretty much all common antigens) for those patients where it might be useful (sicklers, WAA, etc.).

Why Lewis?

We use Mobilab so it pretty much accomplishes that for us with MEDITECH. However, with so many agency nurses and the incredibly high nursing turnover since COVID, we still have to contact the floor to inform them of the need for the specimen. Nurses have so many areas of responsibility to learn and master and, in many cases, are not given sufficient time to learn them, nevermind master them. Our agency nurses only get 4 hours of training before being assigned patients. That's 4 hours to learn MEDITECH, Mobilab, IMobile, Point-of-Care usage and access, Pharmacy Pyxis, Radiology, and everything else they need to interact with for patient care.

Of course not Malcolm! To clarify - we only release for patients that are IS or electronic XM able, and only if the patient is stable with no impending procedures, and has a Hct above our threshold of 7. Patients with antibodies that require AHG crossmatch keep their units reserved for them for the life of the sample (3 days).

In my opinion while this sounds convenient there may be a potential issue with the labels getting lost or forgotten especially if the situation is emergent and nurses are therefore busy.

We only type for the specific antigen but we do perform an Rh phenotype when we find a clinically significant antibody. I used to have all the relevant antisera but, as was defined so succinctly by Malcolm's bean counters, it was too expensive.