VACASE

Thank you so much for your replies! I got some good ideas. I know techs are humans but it's the non-stop chatterers that I worry about, both for themselves and those around them.

Would anyone know where we could get a good antigen frequency chart that lists the antibodies and the percentage of negative units in the normal population? We used to have one and lost it in a lab move. Thanks.

I was wondering if anyone had a policy on or had looked into one on conversations among technologists in the laboratory. I was reading about the Sterile Cockpit Rule that the FAA has as a regulation requiring pilots to refrain from non-essential activities during critical phases of flight and I could see how non-essential activities in the lab could interfere with laboratory testing that requires the technologist's undivided attention, especially in the Blood Bank. Any thoughts?

AMcCord, I would love to see your procedure as well.

We used to put a sticker on units that were ABO/Rh confirmed but stopped doing that a few years ago. We have a shelf in our refrigerator where un-confirmed units are stored until the confirmation is done.

I'm writing to ask what other Blood Banks do for quality monitors in Blood Bank (e.g. STAT Turn-Around-Times). We currently do some but are looking for some more ideas. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Our policy is #1 (historical type) for FFP and Platelets.

We had a physician call and ask when the sensitivity results would be ready on a sample that had a parasite.

We are using Proquis for our document management system as well as incident reporting system.

I’m sorry, my chart didn’t come out to good when I pasted it as a spreadsheet. It should read. FROZEN CODE THAWED FFP CODE (24 HR) THAWED PLASMA CODE (5 DAY) E0701V00 E0773V00 E2684V00 E0869V00 E1318V00 E2121V00 E0869VA0 E1318VA0 E2121VA0 E0869VB0 E1318VB0 E2121VB0

We do 5-day Thawed Plasma and we use the E2121 code as follows: Frozen code (FFP) Thawed FFP code (24 hr.) Thawed Plasma Code (5 day) E0701V00 E0773V00 E2684V00 E0869V00 E1318V00 E2121V00 E0869VA0 E1318VA0 E2121VA0 E0869VB0 E1318VB0 E2121VB0 There should be additional letters on the end of your product codes to state what containers they came from. We use the E2121 code for our 5-day thawed plasma but we use it for the frozen codes starting with E0869. We have E0869V00, E0869VA0, and E0869VB0. When we modify them to the 5-day plasma we use codes E2121V00, E2121VA0 and E2121VB0 respectively. When I look on the http://iccbba.org/ website they have an ISBT128/Codabar map and the code I see for Apheresis FFP|ACD-A/XX/<=-18C is E0869 and they actually have codes for up to 8 parts (E0869VA0, E0869VB0, etc. up to E0869VH0). I did not see the E4693 or E4697 codes you mentioned but they could be new I guess. At any rate you can use E2121 product code for your 5-day plasmas even if they have the same DIN number because the product codes should have different extensions (e.g. E2121VA0 and E2121VB0). As far as your question about which thawed plasma code to use for E2555 vs E7071 (which I think is E0701) you would use the E2701 code for the thawed E2555 product I would think because they have the same description of 'Frozen <=24h.' We use E2684 for the thawed E0701 product. You really need to look at the descriptions and match them up for frozen vs thawed products.

We are handwriting the expiration date on our pooled products. We are also crossing out and handwriting in the new expiration dates on our thawed plasma products. I believe this is acceptable.

GilTphoto, I hate to say it but it sounds like your problem is a personnel one. One of our QA monitors is 'procedure not followed,' as it really is a serious problem. If your employees are not following your procedure (if your procedure clearly states what you are saying should be done) then you may have to go to disciplinary action.

Sorry. I meant to say that I aggree with vsummerville.

I agree. If there is a fair amount of patient plasma and you don't want to waste a lot of antisera you can use the patient plasma to narrow down the amount of units you have to test with the commercial antisera. This is in one of our procedures and we don't do QC on the patient plasma.

Can anyone tell me what the AABB says about using stickers with patient information to label a patient history card. I seem to remember there being a problem with this due to the label possibly falling off of the card. Is anyone doing this or does anyone know what AABB says about it? Thanks in advance.

JerryB, It sounds like we are part of that same system of hospitals and if we do find an ABO/Rh through Remote Patient Data we use that as the confirmation. If they don't match, however, that is a whole different story. If there is no remote patient data we still do the 2nd draw. I, as a patient, would not mind a 2nd stick to be sure they got my info right. Human error happens everywhere. Our 2nd draw is in a smaller tube where only a small amount of blood is drawn. We only do a front ABO/Rh type as the confirmation.

Sorry if this was posted before but is anyone having any problems with the Ortho Gel Panel (0.8% Resolve Panel A)? We are getting inconclusive results with it but when we repeat it using an Immucor panel in Gel it comes out much clearer. Any help would be appreciated.

I don't know if I should start a new post or not but we are using the E5298 ISBT-128 code for our pooled plasma but found recently that we get FFP from our supplier with different preservatives. Most of the individual FFP units are E0701 with a CPD preservative and that works well with the E5298 pooled code because that has the CPD preservative as well. We are also getting, however, individual FFP units with code E0869 which has an ACD-A preservative. I can't find an ISBT-128 code for pooled plasma with the ACD-A preservative but since we don't get as many of these I was wondering if we can pool the two different preservatives together. Does anyone know if it's okay to pool two different preservatives? Also, does anyone know if there is an ISBT-128 code for the pooled plasma with the ACD-A preservative? Thanks.

We recently had this happen at our site. We removed the results from the erroneous record but we did not re-enter the results into what they were saying was the correct record. If we don't have specimen containers labeled with the correct patient name and number how can we be sure whose specimen it is? Does anyone else do this?

We do not repeat QC on a newly-opened vial if it is of the same lot number that we've already QC'd that day. I would like to ask how people are QC'ing their panels.

We periodically get CMV- units from our supplier with our order but if we didn't specifically order the CMV- unit we let them know and they take off the charge. It seems to me you shouldn't have to pay for it if you didn't order it.

Does anyone have a quote or a standard that states the information about ISBT 128 labeling of thawed plasma. Before ISBT 128 (and actually still as we have not received any ISBT-128 labelled FFP units yet) we would modify and relabel a FFP unit as FFP, THAWED when we first thawed it. We would then change to THAWED PLASMA after 24 hours if it hadn't been used yet. Our blood supplier is telling us that with ISBT 128 we will only have to relabel with the new product code after the first 24 hours (when it changes to THAWED PLASMA). There are ISBT-128 codes for FFP, THAWED. Why would they have them if we don't need them? Thanks.

Can anyone tell me where we can buy ISBT 128 labels in smaller quantities? I contacted one vendor who has a 1000 label limit for custom orders (which just means they don't have them in stock). I'm trying to order product labels for our thawed plasma and pooled products. Thanks.

For those of you who do tube testing would anyone be willing to share their procedure on how you periodically change and decontaminate your saline reagent squirt bottles? I know it sounds simple but I can't find info on this right off. We fill our squirt bottles from the cell washers but don't really have a procedure on how often to change the saline and clean the bottles. Thanks in advance.