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Welcome, lots of good info on this site

Welcome! You will love this site

Stat Spin is the way to go. I've validated them at a previous job and based on 3 min and 4000g we checked specimens to make sure the plasma was plt poor. A shorter spin time will most definitely lower your TATs and help with workflows too.

tcoyle makes an excellent point, your vendor may stop supporting your version if you don't take the recommended upgrades. I support 14 hospital BBs and I know upgrading and validating is expensive. There are reasons software is updated, your lab director or IT department needs to allocate funds to get this done for you, tie it to patient safety! I don't know of any mandatory FDA reg that says you must update but it's just like running your car, it needs maintenance if it is to perform well.

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Could it be something stronger than coffee?? But coffee is good too!!

As everyone else said, document, document, document. This person is a huge risk to patient safety which should send up red flags to everyone and it's also a risk to your hospital to have someone of this caliber in your lab. Do you have an HR counseling policy, I've used it to document unsatisfactory technical performance or a violation of organizational values and mission. Start with a verbal warning/discussion. "No you may not do a DAT test without having your competency signed off". After the verbal (document this) then take it to a level I (or whatever your HR calls it), refusing to follow policy and procedure, unsafe patient care, tie this to something in the counseling framework. Get input from HR with this. At the time of the Level I, reiterate that if this behavior is observed again this will take the counseling to a Level II. At this point the tech may need to go on a "highly structured performance improvement plan" which I've seen done in conjunction with the employee. Goals are set, timeframe for touch base meetings set, feed back sessions on progress. You are giving them the benefit of the doubt and this is fair to the employee in question. Usually if the performance improvement goals aren't met, bye bye, adios, das veydanya. You can't do this alone, you need upper management and HR involvement because this could become quite unpleasant for everyone involved. Especially a patient.

Physician responsibility.

What is your site currently doing for the blood product transfusion tag? We are getting ready to change ours and are looking for suggestions to meet all accrediting agencies requirements. Thanks.

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Welcome, this is the best site!!! Ask as many questions as you need to, lots of great knowledge and expertise here.

Level II, 20 min from supplier, 2 plts for stock

Two cell screen for as long as I can remember. It saved the organization quite a bit of money and we keep 2 panels in stock. Have been on gel since 1994 and automated BB analyzer for almost 13 years.

When your lab goes to Beaker your BB system will be interfaced, regardless of which system you decide to go with. My organization has 16 labs on Beaker with HCLL Blood Bank. We sunsetted Meditech, Cerner, McKesson and Sunquest lab/BB systems and all of the labs are on Beaker and HCLL. Being downstream from Beaker you will want to become best friends with your Epic interface analyst as there is always some gymnastics that need to occur with any BB system to get it to talk to Epic and Beaker. After bringing up these 16 sites we learned quite a bit and with our last Epic 2015 upgrade and HCLL Maestro interface upgrade we are at a very steady state. Don't forget you will want to look at the Blood Product Administration workflow, again, regardless of the BB vendor you choose. If you have more specific questions PM or email me, Mary.Mendel@Mercy.Net

Dan87 do you get reimbursed for all of this "extra work"? I haven't done complete XMs since the early 1990s and have worked in a variety of places, large, small, adult, pediatric. Change is hard but it really is time to drop the "unnecessary" testing, imho!