donellda

I don't have answers to all of your questions but I have worked at 2 different facilities where open hearts are performed. Where I currently work, we do have a blood bank refrigerator in the heart room. We have 3 heart rooms but only 2 are routinely used for hearts. OR personnel come to the blood bank to pick up the blood for the surgeries one patient at a time. In most cases, they return the blood back to the blood bank before starting the next case although there has been 2 hearts going on at one time. There has not been a problem as of yet. They keep the units on separate shelves. At my former place of employ, there were 3 heart rooms each with their own blood bank fridge. The blood bank was responsible for bringing the blood to the OR and putting the blood in the correct OR fridge. In cases where the room changed, blood bank went back to the OR and moved the blood themselves. We were also responsible for returning the blood back to the blood bank. There were no problems with this system, at least not while I was there.

Shily, there is no relationship between the Duffy and Lewis systems. If I remember correctly anti-Fy3 is the result of being negative for Fya and Fyb. I think Bob was just making a joke. As he said, if you do an AHG crossmatch and your units are compatible at 37 and AHG, you should be fine.

To be honest, I have not been there for several months. I usually get everything I need from here, however, being new at what I do, I need all the help I can get sometimes.

I go in under our hospital membership.

HI Beth! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk!

In our lab if it's not on paper or electronic, it does not exist. I'm learning very quickly that documentation is one of the most important things. We have a communication log where things such as this are written and passed on to the next shift. It is then their responsibility to read and sign off. We have a similar thing happening right now at our hospital. We have a patient with Anti-U and, of course, we depend on the reference lab to find units for us. Our patient had a hemoglobin of 8.4 and 2 units were ordered. I contacted the floor because of the blood rarity to see if the patient really needed the units. We were told that the patient was going to OR the next for a splenectomy so I contacted reference lab for 1 unit. (We actually had one U negative unit in our inventory). They had a liquid unit but they did not want to give it to us unless it was going to transfused. I contacted our Blood Bank pathologist who called the surgeon. At that point the surgeon said she wanted 4 units which means deglycing frozen units. We managed to get the one liquid from ARC and asked them if their would be a possibility of getting frozen. The surgeon in the meantime, said that having 2 available was fine. The patient received her units but she went into cardiac arrest and the surgery was postponed until Friday. Again they wanted 2. We got 1 liquid and 1 deglyced and both were given and the surgery cancelled again. Now we are looking forward to the fact that the patient still needs her splenectomy as well as a mitral valve replacement. This week will be interesting. As for your situation, we are not physicians and we can only do what we can do if we are at the hands of the reference lab. If we have difficulty getting blood from reference I make sure that the pathologist talks to the doctors involved. It shows that we are not taking this kind of stuff into our own hands. If the case is that there is nothing in writing of a policy, I would definitely pass it on to a medical director for decision making.

I think it's a good idea for smaller labs where the techs are cross trained to work in all areas. It is definitely the best option for the off shifts where staff is minimal. I know at our facility, the second blood banker often is working across the hall in another department so the tech assigned to the department spends a lot time on their own and with busy nights it isn't always optimal.

Hi Madhu! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk!

My supervisor received an email from Cliff inviting her to join BBT. She knew that I belonged to several fitness online forums and thought it would be something that I would be interested in so she forwarded the email to me. She was correct and I joined that day. She also joined a few months later.

It comes from pharmacy here.

We do not pool different ABO types together. If we pool Rh positive and Rh negative cryo together we label it as Rh positive.

Hi Mabel I think that Cliff closed the poll and Aria Red is the skin that had the most votes. The options were there for a long time. Cliff had it set up so that we could actually choose the style that we wanted as individuals. They were in drop down box in the lower left corner of the page but they are gone now. Sorry you missed them. I may have had someone else who liked my favorite too;)

Hi Rosemary! Welcome!

My husband had some good information for us in this area.

:wave:Hi! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk! I'm glad you found us.

We are upgrading to Misys 6.2 and our quality specialist was asked about a risk assessment from the AABB for the upgrade. He asked the LIS department and they said that this was not an IS issue but a Blood bank issue. What do we need for a risk assessment and how do we go about doing this? Hopefully,someone has encountered something similar and can help. Donna:)

We dispense RHIG in the same way as Bob, from the the Blood Bank and based on the mother's Rh type.

We send ours to the system core hematology lab.

:wave:Hi Alan. Welcome to Bloodbanktalk!

I like this one. http://vbskinworks.com/forum/index.php?styleid=256

Hi Anna! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk!

My husband has a couple of digital cameras. His Olympus has too much red eye (which can be corrected but it bothers him). His older one is a Samsung and it took better pictures but it is larger than the new cameras. Tigerdirect has several cameras to offer at a good price. Here is the link http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=7. I just use my camera phone when I go anywhere but the pictures are not always the best.

We are currently in the process of getting 6.2. We should be up in August. I think we are still in the process of naming our components but as soon as I know something I can give you some ideas.

Hi! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk!

Welcome to Bloodbanktalk Teng!