tbostock

We do a Type and Screen on these patients; we also want to see if they already have an Anti-D so we also need the antibody screen. The ED gives us a hard time though and says...we ONLY need the Rh.

I'm at work today too; we had our Thanksgiving yesterday. Also hoping to catch up a little at work. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

We have two; they are great. No problems.

We don't use coolers, but we do require a physician to sign it. We consider uncrossmatched to be high risk, so will not even allow a PA or NP to sign it, has to be a doctor. We usually have to chase them down during a trauma to get it signed, or we get another ER physician to sign if the trauma surgeon's hands are inside the patient or something.

In my 29 years I only saw one, many years ago. Labeled Rh neg and it was very weakly Rh pos.

We can change any result in our LIS, but it keeps track of it, shows who did it and on what date, and throws an exception. We would always have a comment attached why the change had to happen. But nothing can ever really be "deleted". While we're on a physician complaint kick...a surgeon called last Saturday SCREAMING that we did not have a certain size of tissue in Blood Bank that he needed for a Sunday surgery. He said he is filing an incident report and slammed the phone down. I wish he had a chance for us to tell him: 1. He used the last one the day before, Friday afternoon after 4 pm. Unless the Tissue Fairy comes overnight... 2. Hospitals are open on weekends, most companies are not. 3. This particular piece of tissue costs about $20,000, so we can't really keep multiples of every size in stock. 4. This is a new tissue, we've just had it for a couple months...how did you save lives before it was invented? OK, rant over. For now.

She'll take all of her money and go into hiding. You heard it here first.

Some techs in my Lab want to send a thank you/"we support you" letter to the Labs in Paris. It must have been horrific.

We're one of the places that do them for all. We tackled it from a potential risk perspective; when they go bad they can go very bad very quickly. We're more interested in making sure they don't have antibodies than the blood type; we could give O Neg units no problem, but we like knowing up front if they have antibodies and having antigen negative blood available just in case.

You would eventually be able to get some type of ID on the patient and even though not admitted, we would be able to "admit" a patient in our LIS just to get the tracking information in there so we would know where those units went.

For cord blood testing, we also add moms with clinically significant antibodies.

We put brightly colored labels on our rapid infusers (no platelets or cryo) and also label our tags for those products that they cannot be warmed. When we deliver them we also tell the nurse not to warm these. No way to really know in the heat of a massive bleed situation if they notice though.

All get a Type and Screen. We do not do a post-partum Type and Screen, we do just a blood type with the fetal screen.

Not sure; our blood during MTPs is transfused through the rapid infuser. Goes in very quickly so there would be no need to run two through the same line.

We're also close enough so we just run the blood. We're also looking into other options. We have not had success with coolers and the temp stickers.

Yes, we also have a Helmer water bath thawer...also needed to thaw cryo because the microwave is not FDA approved to thaw cryo.

The only regulation is that the person is trained/competent to pick up/transport blood. So it's a hospital decision who you let pick up blood; it should be an employee though (no volunteers, students, etc) because if something happens you need to be able to trace to who picked it up. We use the pneumatic tube system so we don't have anyone coming to pick up anymore.

We have a choice in our LIS for "delivered". We use that.

Yes, we always draw our own before transfusing. Office lab said they had a 7 Hgb, ours was 11.5. So we didn't transfuse him; I spoke to the office and asked if their QC was in and they said "what's that?". Needless to say we got a call later that day saying that their machine was "down" until it could be fixed and could they send us their CBCs.

I am currently enrolled in Rush University's online program. First year is SBB, then you take the exam. You can either get a certificate for the program or continue on to a Master's in Clinical Lab Management and they will give you credit for all of the SBB classes that you completed. It's recommended to take the first year full time (better chance of passing the test the first time), then you can keep going to finish the Master's or do that portion on a part-time basis, which is what I am doing. Great program, great instructors.

Same as David and pbaker; after the first time we just do selected cells to look for new antibodies.

Ours says that the unit must be started as soon as possible after issue, and it must be complete w/in 4 hours of issue.

We check them quarterly on our water bath thawer; recommended by the manufacturer. We don't have a way to check our microwave so we take the temp of every plasma we thaw to make sure it's not overcooked.

I don't believe there are regulations to support this (please someone correct me if I'm wrong), but wondering if anyone has nursing document the lot number and expiration date of the supplies used in blood administration? Administration sets Saline Filters I seem to remember that the FDA was looking at this because of a saline recall once; they were starting to suggest that you document any supplies used with blood transfusions in case of a recall or adverse event. Seems like a good idea but...is it required? And is there anyone that is doing this?

I wouldn't; they were ruled out in your antibody screen.