BankerGirl

Same here.

Thank you to all who weighed in on this subject.

This question was raised recently: why do we always place Red Cells in the upright position for storage and shipping? The shipping part is easy--that's the way the Blood Supplier says it is supposed to be. I cannot find an answer to the storage in the refrigerator. Does anyone know of any standards, recommendations, etc for how to store Packed RCs in the refrigerator--and why? Thank you,

We use Mobilab with Meditech and we love it! When we "upgraded" to Meditech 6 we tried the PHH module that Meditech has and it was a disaster, so we went back with Mobilab. Maybe it would be OK if you didn't know how good Mobilab was, but I can't recommend it.

Same here, so we don't issue more than one platelet at a time.

This does not happen often at my facility, but our policy is similar to AMcCord's. If already infusing, the nurses continue the transfusion and document that. If not infusing on arrival, we are rarely notified prior to the ambulance departing, so we rarely get to send the units back. If there were appropriate shipping conditions/paperwork, then we would accept into our inventory; if not then the units are discarded and the transferring facility notified.

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We also have a communication log. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, ours is just a spiral bound notebook. We also give verbal report to the oncoming shift. This isn't fool proof, but it helps.

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I agree with Malcolm.

We do the same.

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Really Malcolm?

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I have a question about the "newborn card". I am not familiar with this card, so forgive me if this is the case. Does this card contain IgG, and is it incubated at 37 prior to centrifugation? And when you perform the testing in tube, do you incubate and carry it through AHG phase? This is how we detect weak D.

Yes, why would this be different than any other physician's lab order?

We do much the same, except we don't use the BBID numbers.

We did the same. Our Medical Director did send out a letter to all the physicians notifying them of the change, and we heard nothing from any of them about it.

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We do the same as cswickard.

When I started here we performed elutions on all positive DATs as well, but when I became supervisor we put an end to that. Busy work for no real benefit; like your Pediatrician, they treat the babies the same. Just this year, our Pediatric Subsection decided to start performing cord blood evaluations on all babies of O Pos moms. I know there are several facilities that do the same, but we never have. I asked our Mother/Baby nursing coordinator for the evidence they used to make this change and have had no response. I have never understood the long standing practice of performing the cord blood workups on jaundiced babies either. It seems to me this is all academic and of no real clinical value, but what do I know. Does anyone have any Best Practice guidelines with supporting evidence for any of these practices? The only thing I can come up with is that if the baby turns out to be O as well, that may steer them to investigate alternate explanations for the jaundice; but even then, unless the baby is having continued problems, is the information actually used to determine treatment?

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I forgot about the breaking glass sound! I have my volume muted most of the time because my computer is constantly making annoying noises. I get so (disturbingly?) excited when the Christmas lights appear, so thank you Cliff!

Logan 51: I don't understand why you are thinking about changing anything. You have the notice from your survey organization that the sample was contaminated, and I am assuming that your testing showed reactivity with Anti-IgG? I do understand you being troubled by the C3d control cells reacting with anti-IgG, but it seems that you got the result that you should have gotten.

That is what I always thought. We dropped it when we went to our new computer system in August UNLESS the fetal screen comes up positive. That hasn't happened yet.