REN_NH

Women's Services has the patient sign a "Consent for the Administration of Blood Products" upon admission and this covers the RhoGAM as well.

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We are using this workstation also. I was not aware of a new one. I use a similar setup, but with an infrared probe/gun wire, to perform verifications every 6 months (operator's manual says "as needed"). Other than that it is just the daily green light check for temp.

We document that the light is indeed green, indicating that the factory set temperature is OK, on our Daily Temperatures and Checks form as a check mark each day for the "MTS Incubator Status Light Green?". We also check the RPM's daily and record on the same form.

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Does anyone have a flowchart for the workup of cold-reactive antibodies? I'm a Generalist using GEL BT, and GEL anti-IgG with tube IS XM and feedback on this is much appreciated as I am also working on updating policies.

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Do you mean you have a "Manual" called Job Aides that you upload the PDFs in or is it elsewhere in MediaLab?

Resurrecting this thread to ask what document control systems are being used out there? I would love to scan in many items to store electronically (i.e. temperature charts, etc.). Are people scanning to a facilities specific drive or something else? We use MediaLab for policies and competency assessments.

Luckily we have already been using the new workstations when I came across this. I had kept the incubator portion only of the older model like yours for back-up, and went back to using our smaller footprint, yet old, tube incubator block (can't imagine that relic is cleared either!). Once I saw that the old station was no longer FDA cleared, etc., I ordered a new tube incubator block. I am very curious to see if the old incubator can still be used (would love to still keep as back-up) since we always check and document the temperature.

In our 25 bed critical access hospital, uncrossmatched blood orders are always verbal to the Blood Bank and all LIS entries are made by the Blood Bank Tech thereafter. If the patient is registered (true name or John Doe), we perform the Emergency Release Routine in Meditech (otherwise we resort to paper back up procedures). This routine assigns the unit to the patient, and allows us to choose whether or not to add to a specimen in use or create a new specimen order. This same screen documents the issue of the unit to the patient. An Issue/Transfusion card prints and is attached to the unit. A Practitioner's request for uncrossmatched blood form is filled out. The unit is delivered to the care area by the Tech but not handed to the nurse until a provider signs the request form. A nurse can sign but the provider must countersign when time permits. This form is immediately brought back to the Lab and additional units can be added to it need be. The completed form, after review, is scanned into the EMR. The form has space for communicating any antibody history or other special transfusion requirements.

Thank you all for your kind responses! Does anyone use Blood Warmers any more for cold agglutinins or is that reserved for MTP and pediatric transfusion to minimize hypothermia? We do retype our donor units and perform a second type on our patients, but as a workup for this specific case, I think repeating again to remove all doubt would be a good idea, especially since it may not have been the same tech performing the original testing as for the crossmatching. We use Meditech and have the capability to say "Least Incompatible" as a work around for the common not clinically significant cold Ab's. I would just have to include the specifics in our policy. We also do saline replacement. We are a small Critical Access hospital with the nearest ARC Reference Lab 3 hours away but I think the mini cold screen may be doable for us Generalists. Happy Holidays!

Let's assume all units are reacting the same way due to a cold antibody. What needs to be done to deem the units ABO type compatible?

If a patient's Immediate Spin Crossmatch is weakly positive (tube method), and the Antibody Screen and IgG Crossmatch (GEL) are negative, what is the next step to prove Blood Type compatibility? Advancing to pre-warmed method seems a waste of time since the GEL Crossmatch is already negative.