richardsonj

Amen to all of you! I just told my other blood bank tech that we weren't crazy afterall! We have been seeing this on our last couple of lots also. I really liked the "anti-screening cell 2" label! hahaha! One lot was so bad, I called Ortho and had to get replacements. It sure does cause alot of stress and unnecessary work. Hopefully they will get it fixed soon!

Thank you to all who have given advice. Yesterday I made a little spreadsheet entitled "A Day in the Life of a Blood Banker" which broke down all that we do into minutes. I am at 890 minutes of work (there are only 1440 in a 24 hour period) and I haven't even accounted for an antibody workup yet! I have emphasized patient safety which I really thought would push it over the edge... We're not giving up yet, though, so continue to wish me luck! I am meeting with my director today to come up with more ammo...

Hi. We are a small community hospital in western PA. I am currently trying to get approval to get the Immucor Echo. We have OB, oncology, inpatient, and surgical services. We are nearly pulling our hair out trying to keep up in the blood bank. I have presented all of the cost analysis, tech time savings and return on investment to administration, but still no luck. It is going to cost about $5000 more per year for the automation and they are not sold on that yet. They have now asked me if there is a national benchmark for ratio of tech: tests performed for blood bank. I can't find anything. Our data is based on an average of 14 type and screens per day, but of course that doesn't include the antibody workups, irradiation of blood products, QC, inventory, receipt of products from the blood center,temperatures, and all of the other things that go into a blood bankers day. Do any of you have any information that would be useful to me to help administration understand our need? Or any other suggestions on what to try? They have worn me down, which I think is thier point!

As for my facility...there was no disaster, just a "they do it in the city" and a bunch of "what ifs". It's a comfort level for them. We are still manual gel, but are hoping desperatly for the Immucor Echo. So far, not even this has helped push administration over the edge to sign the papers. They counter with "what if the OB's change their practice?" As if!!! And anyways, what about all of the other work that is almost pushing us over the edge also? Patient safety!

Yes, I am referring to the antenatal Rh-immune globulin. We use the gel system and we pick up the anti-D in most of the Rh negative patients so yes, it is a real pain in the ****!!! We also have a policy to set up double units on any patient with an antibody so that means that any Rh-negative mother that comes in to deliver who shows an anti-D has to have 2 units of blood set up. We do immediate spin XM on anyone without an antibody and since we have to do a full crossmatch on anyone with an antibody, we autimatically set up the units. If we did not, this would defeat the purpose of doing the type and screen on admission. The OB docs do not want to wait for blood if needed.

Thank you for this discussion...it is something we have been dealing with at our hospital now for a couple of months. Our old policy was to draw an "extra" tube on all patients admitted in labor. We would then check the history of the patient in the blood bank. If the patient had had thier prenatal work done at our hospital and we had history, the tube was just kept "just in case." If the patient had no history at our hospital, we did a type only to have on file. All patients going for a C-section were order a Type and Screen. Recently, our techs began to notice that they were getting more type and screens on the OB patients so I inquired about the increase. Turns out, the OB docs had decided at their last perinatology meeting that they would begin doing type and screens on EVERY patient admitted in labor WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE IN THE LAB AT ALL!!! Later, our pathologist had a meeting with the OB docs to discuss the necessity of doing the test on everyone (lab didn't think it necessary, OB docs did). We lost and are still doing it on everyone. It has really put a lot of pressure on the BB techs in an already busy to the limit blood bank. Especially because most rH negative moms have anti-D!

We have the same concept as tbostock. We call it the "Surgical Blood Order Schedule" and leave maximum and minimum out of it. We also have a "double" rule for anyone who has an antibody. (If the schedule requires a TS, we set up 2 units, if it requires 2 units, we set up 4 etc.)

I hate to be the bearer of bad news for those of you wanting to get rid of paper copies, but what happens if there is an electrical failure and you can't pop the cd into the computer for reference? Just a thought...

For those of you out there who have either purchased or tried to interface the Echo with Meditech, are you Magic or C/S sites? If there is a C/S site out there, could you give me contact information so I could speak to you personally regarding the process. We are currently in the process of trying to get approval to buy and Echo and would very much like to have it interfaced if possible. Thank you for your help.

Hi! We are considering purchasing an Echo and were told that it interfaces with Meditech C/S? Is is still the case as with the previous posts that the only results that cross are the ABO/Rh? Is there anyone out there with Meditech C/S that has an Echo interfaced? Any information regarding this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks all.

We used a label maker also. It looks like there should be labels made for it because there are grooves, but I do not know of any.

Hi. We use Pall EZ Prime filters. They are self priming high efficiency leukocyte reduction filter sets for single blood transfusions. Our nurses do not seem to have any issues with them. The directions are included in every filter and we have not had one complaint or problem. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Hi. We are using the Hematrax software with Meditech Client Server 5.5 SR2. You may contact me via email if you wish. We went live April 28, 2008. richardsonj@acmh.org