Yes, we have been using the convalescent plasma for about two weeks now. The patients seem to be doing well. We have the new component codes that our LIS created for us to use if you are interested in them.

We use cool shield bubble mailers. The bags are silver and are insulated and they are actually mailers. The bags help retain the temperature of the blood. We issue a lot of blood and sometimes when the blood is returned for whatever reason, the blood is too warm even though it was returned within 30 minutes. The price of the bags are not bad. You will have to order 5 cases at a time to get the discount price. The company is ULINE shipping supplies. Google cool shield bubble mailers to see what they look like. So far, we are pleased with them.

Send me your email address to smarshall@uh.org and I would be happy to share with you our SOP for the Vision instrument.

We give O positive units to all males and O negative units to all females.

We are currently doing the same thing. We only perform cord blood testing on Rh neg moms, "O" moms and moms with any identified antibody.

Thanks, this is good therapy!

We have had the same problem at our hospital with the positive control being very weak. I called Immucor and they sent another Rapid Screen same lot number to see if the kit was better. It was no better than the other one. I had one tech to tell me, if he let it sits for 10 min instead of 5 min, the positive control worked better. I don't know if this is allowed, since the instructions say to let it incubate for 5 min at room temp and wash four times.

We do not issue blood without any paperwork or the emergency release form for the doctor to sign. If the ER does not have any kind of identifier for the patient, they have to assign a temporary medical record number and register the patient as "Doe,Jane" or "Doe,John" until they can id the patient.

We have had a couple of patients with anti-U and we had to get our blood from Red Cross also. One patient was an OB patient and the other patient was not an OB. The units cross-matched compatible. The units need to be U negative, (which is S and s negative).

Our policy is the same as Likewine99

Our policy is to receive the blood back into inventory if it is returned back to the blood bank within 30 minutes from the time of issue.