cathy s rawcliffe

You can find anthing for MSBOS on the internet and download! or print it out! cat

I am of the understanding that all equipment moved will have to undergo certifying it as new equipment which isn't a big issue with most...but refrigeration is an issue to have to undergo more frequent checks on temp monitoring than usual! Back to new refrigerator issues for a period of time...eg instead of every 3 months ...every months for 6 months...until you establish they are op-erating properly...then back on to quarterly schedules .....of course that applies to state inspection schedules...which may require monthly checks anyway! cathy rawcliffe...32 years (..retired)

Am retired now ...but that issue with the length of time that specimens that can be used was quite a big bang issue about 10 years ago ...with hospitals going to same day admits ...etc for elective surgeries.....our facility did an extensive study of running samples when they got their pre-op labs done and obtaining specimens for XM up to a month later and running parrellel testing to see if it made a difference...alll seriously documented. Of course this was on patients who had no transfusion history or pregnancies within the past 3 months .....our conclusion was that we had not one discrepancy in the months of parrallel testing that we did....(using monoclonal reagents) also was an AABB inspector for about 12 years ...and my experience with CAP and JCAHO ...is that both of those organizations ...although they don't always get the wording right in their standards ...do adhere to the intent of AABB .....so if their standards are unclear, one can always defend yourself with clarifying what you are doing with AABB standards! Also ...if one is going to implement something different ...and you have done testing to prove the issue ...that can be passable too! Studies must be run to document that tho! Hope this has been helpful!

Keeping in mind that thought that each facility has it's unique situation, am sharing some observations using Monoclonal IgG. We implemented Monoclonal IgG not long sfter it first came out...and yes it was a relief not having so many "cold" antibodies showing up at coombs, requiring panels! We had AOT! Down the road tho, we still has "stuff" showing up at coombs very weakly that was indeterminate. After much investigating this issue, we determined it was unique situation involding HIV/AIds patients. We had ALOT of those kind of patients. Since their autoimmune system is totally shot, we also figured out over 17 years, we never had one AIDs patient ever develope a clinically significant antibody! Just sharing some info that might be useful!

Does anyone out there test their cartons of saline /immusol or whatever product they are using, for Ph? After being in storage in warehouses, heat etc., we found occasionally we would get a lot in that's Ph had dropped to 5.5 or 6.0. We thought this was important since the lower Ph can cause Kidd antibodies to be missed! We tested it upon opening the carton and documented...another QA monitoring issue!

Our facility used to double seal a section of the remaining tubing and cut it off and submit to Bacteriology ...did this on every unit for a long time until we determined that was not a problem, then continued to monitor once a month for QA issue. This worked well. If we pooled platelets, also did that on the pool tubing to monitor our technique! Am retired now after 32 years , so don't know if they continued that momnitoring process! cathy