donellda

That's weird. Someone at work asked the same question. I always thought that it was about 1 to 2 hours but I have no documentation to say so. I know to measure post transfusion platelet recovery, the platelet count is measured 1 hour post transfusion.

There is a float option in the chat room which should allow you to read posts at the same time. The chat room is relatively so we haven't had a chance to use it as it was attended. I think that Cliff wants to start having scheduled chats at some point to discuss different issues.

Welcome to Bloodbanktalk!

Hi Dr. Drew! We have met before. I am the blood bank supervisor at a hospital Detroit's northwest side. I have attended several of your lectures at the MABB lecture series and at the conferences. Welcome to Bloodbanktalk! I'm glad you decided to join!

:wave:Hi Geri Ann! It sounds like you work for an interesting facility! We should compare notes sometime. I'm from a similar type of facility minus the tissue transplants.

Hi Lu! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk:)

The only thing we use Anti-A,B for is retyping group O units.

Hi Ianeke! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk! It looks like you've done fairly well so far with your post. Cliff, the administrator, posted a tutorial on how to post. I have copied the link to the tutorial for you. Hope it helps:D http://www.bloodbanktalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3660#post3660

We have a pick up slip that includes the patients name, medical record number, the product required (and how many if applicable) and the signature of the RN or MD administering it. I don't have a copy of the slip itself to share. The floors often run out and we often just have them use a patient label with the patients information on a blank sheet with the rest of the information handwritten on the slip.

Hello and welcome! I'm glad you found us! I am having a similar problem with finding med techs. Most of my staff will be retiring within the next few years and my supervisor retired recently so I took her position. I had a lot of problems finding someone to do my old tech position. We had very few applicants and the ones that we had, either had no blood bank experience or they were older with no recent experience. Good luck with SBB exam!

We used to do a procedure for super Dat at my former place of employment. It was done in a similar way to a fetal screen. Patient cells were incubated with anti-AHG for 15 to 30 minutes at 37 degrees. Then they are washed 4 times with saline. Then add anti-AHG. It is used to detect cells that are very weakly sensitized with IgG. I don't have access the full procedure though. Maybe someone else on the forum does this.

We keep our expired panels for 3 months and we keep them on a separate shelf so that they cannot be confused with current ones.

Congratulations on becoming a "full fledged member" Christopher!:handshake

I think that most of the billing for the babies is more for the processing involved. Most of the babies that we have only get one aliquot from a unit. That is why I end up having units with 230 to 220 ccs left. I have reduced our standing order of neonatal RBCs so maybe this will help remedy the problem. We will start putting more than one baby on a unit.

I find it occasionally interferes. We usually will do our ABO and Rh testing without washing the cord blood cells. If we find the reactions a bit grainy we will then wash the cells 4 times to remove the Whartons's jelly before testing again. Every once in a while there will be that one stubborn cord that has to be washed more than 4 times but other than that we just do them from the straight suspension.:cool:

Welcome to BloodBankTalk Bob! You sure do keep busy! It's what keeps us healthy!

I have a question for those transfusion services that deal with neonates. What do you do with the remainder of a unit that was used for a neonate that only had one or two aliquots taken off? When I worked at previous hospitals, when the unit was getting close to expiration, we would use them for an adult as long as there was at least 200 cc left in the unit and as long as it was not the only unit given to the adult. It has also been the practise here but I had an employee yesterday who insisted that the unit had to consist of at least 250 cc. I tried to explain that the unit only contained 250 cc to begin with since it was a CPDA-1 packed RBC. This employee wants to some sort of documentation or standard that these units can be used for adults. We do use a sterile docker to attached the syringe when we take the aliquot off so this is not an issue at our facility. If you have any practises that you could share with me and if you know of any sources that state appropriate unit volumes for adults, it would be very helpful to me. Thanks!

Wish I was old to join you in the early retirement. I've just started my job and already greener pastures are beckoning me:cool:

We convert our expired thawed FFPs, after 24 hours to what we call thawed plasma which has an expiration date of 5 days so I'm assuming we are talking about the same product. We do not use a different component label. When we convert the product in our computer system to "thawed plasma" the computer interprets the product barcode as "thawed plasma" rather than FFP. We do have a label that we put on the the plasma that says "Thawed Plasma" and there is a section on the label to write the new expiration date. We do the component processing from "thawed FFP" to "Thawed plasma" in BCP in Sunquest/Misys. Hope this helps.

We bill for each antigen that we type for but we do not charge the patient for typings that are antigen positive. These are charged to our workload along with the controls for our antigen typings.

Hi Angela! Thanks for the introduction! Congratulations on your new position! The forum for posting process improvement topics would probably be Quality for now. I am looking for to reading your posts about Six Sigma and Lean. I have been incorporating some of the ideas from Lean into my own Blood Bank. (I sneak them in gradually so my staff doesn't rebel;))

Hi John! Welcome to Bloodbanktalk! You are posting perfectly:) I find this to be a great place to help me with my job so I'm sure you will find some information to help you and as you say, help us also.

Don't feel bad. I have written the exam twice and gotten the exact same mark both times. I found that both times I wrote there were a lot of questions about medications which I had never heard of. I had taken the MABB SBB Lecture series and used the notes from the lectures to study and both times walked out feeling like I had written an exam on mechanical engineering or some subject I had never heard of before. I also remember getting the same question twice and none of the choices matched my own calculations either time. I'm trying to decide whether I should put myself through this torture again. There is a course to help prepare for the SBB through one of the universities in Chicago. I have a pamphlet in my office at work. I'll look for it tomorrow for you.

The only source I have here at home right now is my AABB Technical Manual. It does discuss the problem of potassium leak in stored, irradiated CPDA-1 RBCs, stored for greater than 24 hours and suggests washing them. I think they are referring to older units or aliquots that have been irradiated more than a day before transfusion. This would work if your facility has an irradiator and the capability of washing cells. I remember at the hospital that I was previously employed, we would aliquot the the blood and then irradiate the aliquot just prior to transfusion. Where I work now, we have neither an irradiator or a cell washer. We deal with neonates but we are part of a health system that can transfer the very sick babies to another hospital in the system so we basically get O positive and O negative, CPDA-1, CMV and hemoglobin S negative, irradiated units from Red Cross and aliquot from the units as we need them. Most babies get one or two aliquots from the unit when they are still fresh and the remainder is given to an adult if the unit has more than 200 mls left.

I prefer to use irradiated units for neonates when they are fairly fresh. We get ours from Red Cross with the usual 28 day outdate. If they are still on our shelf after 21 days, I tend to put them out as expiring units for adults because the potassium in the unit tends to increase as the unit ages and some neonates cannpt handle the higher potassium concentration.