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Our document control system assigns SOPs to the appropriate staff members. They sign off in the system indicating that they've read it and that they understand it. That signoff is maintained as long as the SOP is held in the system, so pretty much forever. If there is a competency requirement along with a new or changed policy, then that is documented and stored as long as any other competency and would be included w/ the documentation for that year.

I have even gone so far as to tell the nurse taking care of the patient that when they learned the patient's name and not the room number to give me a call back and we will discuss the patient at that time.

Thank you all for your comments. To be clear, I do not advocate the removal of the control from the blood grouping test; automated or manual. My interest was sparked following a group conversation on this topic where I was surpried to find that some folk would be comfortable to omit the control, and rely solely on forward vs reverse typing as a check. They were less certain when I challenged them with the scenario of a discrepant blood group!

Hi Malcolm, Totally agree! Hence the worried face at the end of the original post.

Very, very worried.

The phrase "knowledgeable about the contents" rather says the same as I said. They don't just need to have read any changes, but know what they mean and how they are involved in the procedure.

CAP standard COM.10300 "Knowledge of Policies and Procedures" simply states: The laboratory has a defined process and records indicating that all personnel are knowledgeable about the contents of the policies and procedures (including changes) relevant to the scope of their testing activities. Our "defined process" indicates that we save those records for 2 years.

We all have these transfusion event stories. Rec'd a phone call in the middle of the night years ago. 3 out of 4 units were transfused to the incorrect patient. Fortunately both pts were O Pos. We used Typenex numbers. BB tech switched the 2 patients; could only be resolved at the bedside. 2u transfused in dialysis. When asked about the "red" numbers I was told that they no longer checked them as they always matched. I informed them that they gave 2u the day before to the incorrect patient.

Preparation and Testing of DTT Treated Plasma.docx

TS- Dithiothreitol -DTT- Treatment of RBCs.pdfThis is our procedure for the HemoBioScience product. it will be open for 30 days only. (I think) Don't worry about thawing it too many times - there is only 2-4 mls in each tube, so it doesn't last for that many pts. We have just thawed ours at room temp. We wrote the procedure using both the HemoBioScience procedureand the one in the AABB Tech Manual. Best of luck

Not sure about just one answer - We had a labeled Rh negative RBC from the ARC that retyped as Rh positive. Upon investigation, it was found the Immucor anti-D reagent we use for retyping had anti-Crawford while the ARC automated process for D typing used an Ortho reagent which was from a different clone. Not very unlikely but certainly more than one answer.

Welcome

Very nice reference. Nice to see a concise, clear - recent - rework of irradiation recommendations. Thanks.

In my opinion, this very much depends upon the underlying pathology. For example, if the patient has an auto-immune haemolytic anaemia, the chances are very strong that the DAT will be positive before as well as after the transfusion, and that any eluate will be positive with all red cells tested (of normal type). The chances of detecting a new antibody specificity on the DAT positive red cells under these circumstances is disappearingly small. Therefore, if the sample is sent to a reference laboratory on a regular basis, your manager will be 1) showing a degree of ignorance that should

Ok, I'll start. The story of "Who turned off the Light". The year was 1999. Hospital "Notme Medical Center" supported an outpatient clinic for patients requiring transfusion, some due to sickle cell anemia. Often these were young adults that came into the clinic very early in the morning. After their blood was collected and they were waiting for the crossmatched packed red cell units to arrive, the patients preferred to sleep (pre i-phone years). Normally at least one light was left on, usually the bathroom light, while they were waiting. At 0530 the first of two tagged crossmatched