rcollins

Hi Eva, In your product dictionary, include all of the possible divided barcodes. So instead of just E0869 add E0869VA0, E0869VB0, E0869VC0, and E0869VD0. And those are zeros on the end, not capital O. That should work for you. Becky

Hi Everyone, I'm resurrecting this oldie. We've just gone live with TAR and I have questions about the volume for our LRBCs also. We have it default to 250 for our products that are "from 450 ml whole blood--E0401) and I'm hearing that some of our units are more and the extra volume has to be documented into the "other" field on the nursing input and output section. What do you guys do? If I default it greater than 250, I'm afraid that if the unit is less, it won't look like the entire unit was transfused. Thoughts? Becky

We're going to be going live with a new Meditech version (6.1) and we'll be starting to use TAR with barcode scanning. This prompted my facility to buy a digi-trax printer so we can reprint labels when we make components. Can anyone help me with this? Should I buy 4x4 labels with DIN removed or can I get by using just the 4x2 (to label the bottom two quadrants)? Also, shouldn't I retain our blood supplier's facility information on there? We don't aliquot and we don't pool...we just make components. Thanks for your help. Becky

We are half your size and have all generalists. Lately I've made things like this a question of respect for the job and our hospital coworkers. We expect excellence from phlebotomy and nursing in regards to specimen collection and transfusion of products. No questions, hesitation or excuses. We expect excellence from our blood suppliers in regards to safety and quality of products. If something's not perfect, we're not using it. How can we do that with a straight face if we do not expect excellence from ourselves? If someone calls me a BB nag I agree with them and just tell them that we need our actions to match the excellence we expect from others. They're starting to get it and starting to trust that anyone who rotates through there gets it, too. Blood Bankers have always been called "different" and that's a good and necessary thing. Any generalist who is in our blood bank that day is, indeed, a "Blood Banker." It's annoying to nag most days but if you keep at it, it will get better! Or the ones who get tired of you will leave. Oh well. Good luck to you! Becky

Ok this made my day! Thanks for sharing it!

These make me so happy! Super cute, Cliff!

Bringing up an oldie but goodie. Our facility feels more comfortable administering RhIG to miscarriage patients even if they're very early into their pregnancy. We routinely perform antibody screens on these patients (not necessarily before issuing the RhIG). It doesn't seem like we would have to do this...but it is worth it to have a "complete" picture for the OB patient?

This is a huge help! Thanks so much...this may work for us too. Off to test some stuff

Thanks for your response. We do have the hgb linked so it appears during different steps of resulting/issuing. I'll just say that there is a potential for a nurse to assume transfusion orders based on unit RDY status even when the hgb is "acceptable" for a transfusion. What is your unit status when it is ready to be issued?

Haha, I was just going to start this thread! Glad I'm not going crazy (well, at least in this respect). I like how it follows my mouse Cool.

Calling all Magic users... I'm looking for a way for the lab to order two units for our antibody patients but not make them seen by nursing as "transfuse these units now". It's our policy to order two LRBC on our inhouse antibody patients but there is a potential for clinical staff to see two units in ready status and assume they're for transfusion. How do others deal with this? Do you have separate "give" or "transfuse" orders? Do you change the units to some kind of custom inactive status? Thanks, Becky

Thanks for your responses! Scott, a transfusion slip with the complete patient demographics and unit information go with the unit, it's just not tied, attached, stuck on, etc. The patient's info is verified when they bring down their physician signed uncrossmatched blood form when they're picking their units up. The units are issued through the "emergency issue" function in Meditech Magic to registered patients. So all of the information is linked in our HIS. Certainly ER is responsible to "log what unit goes into what patient." When they're infusing, they match what is on the transfusion slip to the unit and the patient's wrist band. After you do your 5 minutes in mediware assigning the units how do you actually label them? Mabel, I see where you're coming from, but I think if a member of clinical staff comes into the blood bank with our standard form for blood for Mr. Apos, is issued and reads back form with Mr. Apos's info with BB staff, takes the Apos unit with Mr. Apos's patient information all over it and runs into some other room and hangs it on some other patient without looking at anything then we're in big trouble!

Thanks Mabel, good point. Maybe that's just the compromise I was looking for. I think O negs will go flying out the door and anything beyond that will have patient specific information attached.

Hi Everybody, Opinions please... For normal, crossmatched units we label our units with an adhesive hollister label that has all the required info (handwritten) and we send a computer generated "transfusion slip" (we have Meditech magic) with the unit (unattached). For emergency issue, I've told the techs that we just need to apply our bright orange "uncrossmatched" label and send the transfusion slip with the patient information on it. I've gotten some differing opinions who say that we should still apply the adhesive handwritten hollister label to the unit so it shows exactly who the uncrossmatched blood should be transfused to. I guess we'd have to cross out the "compatible" wording. What do you all think/do? I believe it will take precious extra time to handwrite a hollister label and stick it on an uncrossmatched unit, but I certainly see the other viewpoint too, and I want to follow requirement guidelines also (we're CAP and AABB). We're a small hospital with not a lot of opportunity to issue uncrossmatched blood. Extremely small chance we'd ever have two traumas requiring emergency issue at one time. Becky

I don't think AABB defines it that specifically, however Standards 28 (6.1.4) reads "Review of each policy, process and procedure shall be performed by an authorized individual at a minimum every two years."

Same here...lab personnel dump urines down sink drain and stools just go into biohazard in their containers.

Thanks David, I'll not include every special antigen typing sera, as I don't think it's right to use an expired Anti-E (for example, among others) because it's not difficult to obtain. Becky

Hi Everyone, Does anyone have an official list of what they define as "rare" BB antisera? I'm doing my CAP self-inspection and the requirement TRM.31250 discusses using "rare" reagents past their expiration date as long as QC works. No prob with that but it also states The laboratory should establish criteria defining which reagents are considered "rare.".......The reagents are unique, rare or difficult to obtain; or delivery of new shipments of reagents is delayed. Would it be sensible to create a list for the techs (and inspectors) to refer to?

Hi Yinluan, I would recommend keeping this report with you and if you are ever hospitalized again, pass it on to your clinicians so they can alert the blood bank. It will just help guide them more quickly to the appropriate blood for you.

Hi Everyone, I have my schtick down for 8th grade and High School Career Days but I'm participating in one for 4th and 5th graders next week. Any ideas of what kind of things to bring to show the little guys and talk about? Becky

We did an open house a couple years ago and it was a huge hit. We had snacks/baked goodies and a punch bowl all supplied by lab staff in our conference room where people mingled and then lab tour guides picked them up from there and took them around. We made up a word search of every lab employee's name and then used completed word searches as the drawing for a prize. The prize winner got to take home the flower centerpiece we had in the conference room with the food. We also had some pens made up that said "Thanks for visiting the Lab" that attendees took with them.

Woohoo there it is! Thanks racer, my day is getting better now.

I believe they're a part of Becton Dickinson (?).

Pharmacy handles the factors here, too. OUr BB has nothing to do with them. (hooray).

We needed to label our -30 drawers, so we removed the drawers (one or two at a time) to let them warm up. Once they were at room temp we cleaned them really well where the labels were going, stuck the labels on (P-touch label maker) and put the drawers back in. They're sticking really well in the cold. If you have some wiggle-room as far as space goes you might want to try that.