Kathyang

We have a small Helmer platelet incubator. It holds 5 apheresis platelets. It is the i series and is a counter top. We are also a small hospital and we keep on platelet at all times.

We have SoftBank and yes I like the system. It has taken some work to get them to communicate correctly. It will be an ongoing process for any BB system to work well with Epic.

We have all of the units listed as you mention above in the Blood Bank system but the Dr's only see the 4 main categories. If they want anything special in the unit (irradiated, washed, etc.) they have to use a special comment. This way they don't get mixed up on which product to select.

Yes. We have been using Epic/ Softbank for 2 years now.

We use saline just to make sure they aren't just agglutinating.

I have procedures for the Ortho Workstation. I am not sure if Ortho comes and trains or not. We had the MTS stations before the Ortho workstation. You will need some kind of fluke thermometer to take the temp since it only tells you if it is heated or not. There is no temperature gauge. If you never have used gel before they may train you on it. Don't but the big rack, it takes up a lot of space and the boxes that the gel cards come in works well. I will attach the workstation procedure. If you want any other procedures for gel let me know.BB4-24 Ortho Workstation ver.1.doc If you want our validaton I can also attach it, just let me know about that too.

Just for knowledge, my mother-in-law had 6 Rh positive kids and she was Rh- Negative. There was no RhoGam back then. She came in later to have surgery and still had no Anti-D. She was not weak D positive either.

We treat the OR patient like any other patient that gets blood. They can ask for an emergency release but we still require them to bring a piece of paper with patient's name, medical record number, date of birth, and Blood Bank ID if the patient has a BBID wrist band. They may bring a chart sticker down to get blood since it has all but the BBID number on it. The BBID number must be written on the piece of paper. They don't always like this process but we need to know which patient since they will probably have more than one patient. It is our way to cover for legality purposes.

I don't know that it is a regulation but studies have proved after 12 hours people start making more mistakes. We saw this with a tech who worked 14 hours in a Blood Bank where I previously worked. We could see by the work that was done in those last 2 hours. Also sometimes the work that needed completed but wasn't.

I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share a Cooler Validation procedure with me? I just use a thermometer and Hemotemps. Thanks.

I have a form which covers the 6 CLIA requirements that we use through out the whole lab. Each area has put on their own requirements. I will try to attach it. I have a separate one for evenings and nights since they don't do all the same testing as days. BB competency day.docx BB competency evenings night.docx

With Gel, we test anyone who is 2+ or less. Most of our weak D's come up 2+. If they haven't had genetic testing, we give them RhoGam to be safe.

We do a confirmatory ABO/Rh on all patients if we don't have a historical. We do electronic crossmatches when antibody screens are negative, no history of clinically significant antibody, and we have two types, which could include a historical. If there is only one type, we give "O" type with immediate spin until a second type is completed. the second type must be on a different specimen drawn at a different time.

We bought a thermometer with the wire probe. We insert it into one of the gel wells and place it in the workstation.

At my previous job we only did the front type for our "retype" ABO and no inspector ever said anything. Basically when you do an immediate spin crossmatch, you are only checking the front type of a patient since you are using the patient's cells, not the plasma.