tcoyle

AABB = 10 years per the 29th edition of standards. Locally you might (and probably should) have a policy for record retention.

That is horrible...and so much for transparency.

Yes. We use SafeTrace Tx and we will also be moving to EPIC. We have all electronic documentation to the EMR (except with some emergency release units) which has paper. After transfusion of the emergency release units, they are updated in the transfusion lab in SafeTrace Tx which in turn, ends up back in the EMR.

We use an application called File Net. You can scan documents in, find by medical record number (if that is how you set the system up).

Looked like a valcano to me Mari. :-)

Happy Friday! See my answers above.

Generally a granulocyte transfusion is the last resort as you don't give one transfusion, but a series of transfusions over consectutive days. It takes alot of coordination to have donors ready and willing to go through the process to make them able to donate the number of WBC needed for donation.

I agree. To me it is best lab practice to take the shorter time frame.

All, How would you handle this scenario? (think general lab requirements, not necessarily blood bank requirements) You have a reagent that is made with a powder. The powder expires on Sept. 30, however, when one makes up the solution; the solution itself has an expiration of 6 months. Should the solution stay at 6 months or should it be Sept 30? If you have any CAP/CLIA/NYS standards you could give me to justify your answer that would help too

Mabel: We are currently running 3.9.0 on Windows 7 for over a year and so far so good. We performed regression testing, tested our interfaces from our LIS to the EMR and billing as well as the interfaces to our instruments.

We did extensive validation when we moved from XP to Windows 7 to ensure that our applications were going to work with the new platform. The vendor may say it will work, but our motto is, "Trust, but verify."

The lab will check the helipad refrigerator each shift and restock as needed, or if contacted. The TP is brought back to the lab when it has ~24 hours of life left. We are a pretty busy place, so using that product isn't really an issue. We also keep TP (usually A's and O's) on hand so we having it ready to stock, again isn't an issue.

We do keep thawed plasma in our helipad refrigerator for use on those helicopter excursions.

Hello, We do not routinely add the check sum digit to the unit number on reports or other items. It has to be entered when manually typing in a unit number, and if we dont have that check sum digit, we can type the number into the ISBT calculator which will then give us the check sum that goes with that unit.

We have a microwave too. We also convert our FFP to thawed plasma, so we keep several units (A's and O's) thawed and ready for use.

I went to the source itself...from an ICCBBA information standards specialist... The Standards do not specify the actual size of the DIN so you have the flexibility to adjust the size so long as it can be scanned and read by the human eye. The only specification is that the Donation Identification Number must be printed such that all characters are of the same font, point size, and color.

Ditto...

Agree with SMiller!

Thank you to all who responded a while ago to the original question. I love the Edit comment! What a circle of death that leads too...no time to report as there is too much work, but not enough personnel. Not enough personnel, so there are errors that no one reports because they have no time. So, I would guess, people are correcting their own errors without reporting. No chance for process improvement there! Are most people reporting their events to your quality people on line or some electronic means or paper or??

Thanks everyone for adding your thoughts.

I agree that length of service does not give you the ability to perform overrides, but how do you decide who is able to override factors in the computer?

Questions about assigning roles and responsibilities Currently in our institution we have management assigned the role of performing computer overrides. The management is anyone from a lead, technical specialist, quality specialist, assistant supervisor and supervisor. These roles really have no required qualifications for "years" of work. Only that they are medical technologists. There have recently been some rumblings about the role of management in performing computer overrides. Are they really the right people to perform this overriding when they may in fact, not understand the process or the actual factor they may be overriding. The technologist may be able to communicate that with the management person or perhaps they may not. While historically management has "always had this role" of overriding...are they really the right people to perform this? How do you determine who has the ability to perform an override in your institution. Is it based on a competency test? Years of service? Role based only? Comments? Thanks for reading!

Has anyone used a SafeTrace (donor or tx) Product, then switched to Soft? Pros-Cons?

For those that answered, I am curious as to how many units you transfuse on an annual basis? Also, are you doing any product manufacturing? Thanks.

Would anyone care to weigh in on the pros and cons of softbank? We currently use a different bloodbank system for Tranfusion and our donor services and product manufacturing. Does anyone have experience with the Soft System vein to vein on a large scale, including mobiles? I would take any comments. Message me privately if you don't care to share publicly. Thanks!