Nicki

Just to add to Malcolms post - in the UK we now need staff to do Mandatory transfusion training plus a competency assessment. There is currently disparity between the Guidelines which state assessment must be 2 yearly for collection of blood from the fridge and a Safer Practice Notice which states 3 yearly for assessments. I'm sure it's done to make our lives as complicated as possible!! Nicki

Hi Dave, Did you post the LEAN information? I can't find it, but it may be because I'm not looking in the right places (still trying to find my way around!). I'm about to do a LEAN type excercise where I work so it would be really useful. Thanks, Nicki

Another query about blood fridges and monitoring them: We have chart recorders on all of our fridges because of the British Standard BS4376 part 1 for blood fridges. We are getting a new temperature monitoring system and I was wondering if this means that we can get rid of the chart recorders? (we didn't use them when I worked at NBS) as I think they are prone to errors (putting them on wrongly, pens and battery running out etc). However we don't have a copy of the standard to see exactly what it says. Can anyone give me further information about this standard? Has anyone else stopped using chart recorders? Thanks, Nicki

We are looking at new temperature monitoring systems - does anyone have any good or bad experiences with any systems? We need something to cover 3 sites, 2 of which are not staffed overnight. thanks, Nicki

I think it is how blind some people are.... a broken fridge with a very prominent label saying out of use, plus brown parcel tape around the door several times (old fashioned fridge with no lock), warm inside as its off, and someone took the tape off and put PLATELETS in it!!

Hi, We use www.learnbloodtransfusion.org.uk Not sure of the cost. People like the fact you can do it at home but the general feedback we have is that people prefer face to face sessions. It has lab and clinical based sections. I also think that it gives people the chance to keep doing the assessments until they pass and I'm not sure the information actually goes in. But then who is to say if they'd listen to me teaching them any better! We are trialling teaching sessions with an assessment at the end, but it is very labour intensive. Nicki Nicki Nicki

Hi Malcolm, Sorry to be cheeky, but I am a fairly new TP in Cornwall and am looking for all the help I can get for training. Is there any chance I could have a copy of those talks too? Could you email them? Every oportunity to gain knowledge from other people is not to be wasted I feel!! Thanks, Nicki

Hi, If you go to conditional formatting in the format menu, and the condtions in the cell for the date completed are: Condition 1 cell value is between =TODAY()+31 and TODAY()+14 Condition 2 cell value is less than=TODAY()+14 Then you just select the appropriate colour - we have orange for condition 1 and red for condition 2. Ours isn't password protected as we are trying to encourage its use so staff can see we are doing something with the non-conformities they find with their audits. Nicki

Thanks for the docs Rashimi. We use an excel spreadsheet for recording our corrective actions - I have recently got our IT guy to make the colors change to yellow 1 month before it is due and red after it is due so it is easier to see at a glance what is out of time (last years database had so many entries and counting them was proving a nightmare). We discuss each incident each week at our TMG meeting. We add incidents to it from audit and an access database we run in transfusion to catch the information. Unfortunately it is too big to post. I am trying to roll it out to the rest of haematology but they are a bit resistant! We are trialling an incident form similar to the one Rashimi has posted, with the idea that the person involved does their own investigation in the hope they will have an understanding of how much is involved in root cause analysis. Nicki