Originally Posted by Malcolm Needs << Mistakes WILL occur, and when Trusts are sued, as is inevitable, the number of properly trained staff within blood transfusion will be examined in court - and I think that the hospitals will lose. I think, therefore, that, although the BMSs in Blood Transfusion are, at present, under "nuclear" attack, it will only be a short time before the MHRA steps in, and the short-sightedness of those involved will be obvious to all, and the correct balance between BMS and MLa (HTO/HHTO) staff will be re-established.>> Actually Malcolm, I can't see this happening for at least 10yrs, after which the majority of us with any technical/QA skills will have left the profession. Even the MHRA is going through staffing problems- and they certainly won't be able to keep up inspections to the level at which they began. With the impending changes being bulldozed through (and don't even mention "change control"!!) the majority of us will not even be able to maintain our incident handling systems, let alone teaching and training aspects- so an increase in serious mistakes will not be noticed within departments. Clever idea to close the NPSA around this time too don't you think?? I suspect haemovigilance reporting in the UK will be going downhill rapidly from this year onwards, especially as majority of managers that will be in charge of Blood banks will be someone with no transfusion background. Someone quite senior recently said to me that "transfusion is really simple now that we have Gel cards"!!