This came up at our facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Infection control advice was to handle blood units as per usual precautions, given that PPE would be worn by anyone handling the blood units and hand hygiene performed before initiating transfusion.  All coolers returned to the blood bank are disinfected at our facilities regardless of patient isolation status. 

Hi there, looking for a good quality temperature log tag that can be sent with a shipment of blood.  What's everyone out there using and why do you like it or not like it?

Thanks!

Hello, we are moving to Epic in our province. My understanding is that Epic does not have a blood bank module. For those of you on Epic, who is your blood bank LIS provider that links into Epic and are you happy with the module. What are some of the pros and cons of your IT module?

Thanks. 

Thanks for the replies. Those are very helpful points :)

Hello,

One of our smaller sites uses a specimen rocker to keep platelets agitated before being transfused.  They do not routinely stock platelets which is why purchasing a platelet incubator/agitator is not on the agenda.  On our last accreditation inspection we were cited for not performing a validation of the rocker for platelet storage.  Has anyone done a validation of this type and could you share the details of how to set this up?

Thanks!

Hello, for those of you monitoring KPIs for your transfusion service: what type of quality objectives do you track and how do you measure performance?  Thanks

We run QC once per day with known positive reagent antisera. If you’re referring to lot to lot comparison, we do not currently do that, but you could use a patient sample with a known positive screen or a neg sample spiked with a couple drops of anti D, as suggested above. 

Within 1 degree at in our institution.