ShowDogDad

We do 500 mL weekly.

Wow! That's interesting. I can honestly say that we have NEVER seen that here. However, we do not have a pediatric population here.

I'm curious too. I have never heard of doing plasmapheresis on big black and white bears! >;-)

Not exactly an excuse, but the funniest one I had was a woman in her late 60's. She didn't answer any of the sexual behavior questions, so I had to follow up. She said "Honey, I've been a widow for over 10 years and probably didn't have sex for 10 years before that. So just put NO for everything!". POOR GAL! >;-)

What code are you using that requires a 200ml minimum? The code that I was going to use just had "XX" for the volume. E5191FRESH FROZEN PLASMA|CPD/XX/<=-18C|ResLeu:<5log6

Just under 1/2 of our donors are autologous. We let our auto donors donate with a history of cancer. However, we do put in deferrals just in case they should ever try to donate as an allo. Leukemia, Lymphoma and Hodgkins disease are indefinite. Any type of malignant melanoma is 5 yrs from last chemo or radiation.

We are located in the hospital also. We give our employees 3 hrs off for each donation. So, if someone donates SDP, they get 3 hrs off. Then they can come back in one week later and get another 3 hrs off for donating whole blood. Plus a SDP donation counts as a "pint" towards their "Multi-gallon" donor status. All multi-gallon donors are invited to a luncheon every year where we raffle off multipe prizes.

I agree with PSanai. Every time someone comes in to donate any type of product, they must get a full screening. I don't have the regs in front of me right now to quote you anything, but every unit must have it's own testing. Many of our donors donate SDP one week, then come back the following week to donate whole blood. They fill out a new questionnaire and we go over it completely with them. Then we send every test out no matter when they were tested last. The only exception to this is Stem Cells. They only get tested once for their course of stem cell donations.

Hey there, I don't think that there is a "perfect" system. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital was the first institution to go live with HCLL Donor. It's not a bad system. Has a lot of nice features. There is still quite a bit of tweaking that needs to be done though.

Hey Keri, I work in the Blood Donor Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. I am also the point person for our LIS. Welcome to BB Talk!

We do quite a few directed donors for our ortho population. We do not charge. The recipient just gets charged for the blood during surgery if they recieve it. We do not charge not only because we may give out the RBC's to the general inventory, but also because every directed donation's FFP and PLT's go into the general inventory. We do require a doctor's order for directed donation. HOWEVER... If the Dr. orders 1 unit of blood, we will take as many directed donors as the patient sends in. This is rationalized because many donors don't know their blood types. So, if the blood is incompatible, it is automatically put into the general population.

Wait... do you collect donors? Or are you a transfusion service only?

Boston, LCS and John... How big are your centers and what system are you on that allows you to be totally paperless??? I have been wanting that technology here, but I doubt that we are big enough to make the cost worthwhile. In 2007, our allos, autos and therapeutics combined were almost 5,000.

Can't help you out on the gel system, as I'm on the Donor side. We are the first site in the country to go live with HCLL Donor. It's not that bad of a system.

Can't answer that for sure. We just collect at this end of the hall. Issue is done from the other end of the hall. Last time I asked, I think they said the discard rate was around 15%. The biggest change for our collections is that they are only ordering one unit most of the time now instead of the 2 or 3 units they used to order.