Elaine Viggiano

If the alternate question(s) have not been part of the approved "package" of the Self Administered Donor Questionnaire, I would not use them. These questions have gone through a rigorous program of re-work and validation activities and should not be modified by virtue of a "second chance" question that was not part of the original FDA-approved questionnaire. A "NO" or "NOT SURE" on the first shot should be directed to a competent Donor History-taker for comments and resolution.

Is anyone doing Quality Control on "temp-a-dot" thermometers used to take a Donor's temperature on the day of donation ?

Cliff, this is a two part answer to your question.. First, we establish specific timelines for the Occurrence Reports' closures. That way, the responsible Department Heads know when this timeline is looming. Second, a query can be set up in your Data Base to provide interval reports (weekly, monthly,, etc) on the ones that are outstanding. That's how we do it. The Dept Heads are then responsible for completing the Occurrence Reports in a timely way. This information is presented at our monthly QA meetings. Believe me, no Dept Head wants to be the laggard !! Hope this helps.

The ASQ (American Society for Quality) is also an excellent source for 6 Sigma information. If you are not already a member, I strongly recommend it. Another thought: you cannot do this in a vacuum. It needs the undying, full support of the Executive Management of your organization. This is a real investment in Human Resources (paid time) to accomplish Six Sigma projects. Not for the faint of heart, and not without the full blessing of the powers-that-be.

The most obvious tool to use is the Self Assessment lists that should be provided by the Accreditation agencies. If they are taken seriously, and each question is truly examined, this should be adequate to prevent "show stoppers" from happening. The operational processes should also be evaluated by touching on the Quality Essentials as you review them. For example, if you are looking at your "crossmatch" process, you can pull in Equipment, Audits, Reagents/Suppliers, QC, Facilities, Computers, Records, etc. to be sure they are in compliance. I am employed in the Quality Assurance Department of a large Blood Center

Are you familiar with the Microsoft Access Data Base program ? We are using it with moderate success. We are logging the basic information from the paper Incident Reporting system, and tracking it through the Access Data Base. It is capable of performing DB queries, setting flags, and producing reports. Feel free to e-mail me directly: e-mail address removed by admin, spammers get too many new ones this way. Please send a private message to Elaine Viggiano to learn the e-mail address.