Hello! I was hoping to gain some incite in the use of typenex bands. I came from a reference laboratory that also had an offsite transfusion service that based everything off the medical record number. Now I work at a place that uses typenex bands and I will admit that I find them confusing. The current practice here is band any patient that has blood bank testing ordered which will require product or think might require product. These are technically good for three days. However if more specimen is required, then we reband the patient (I know this sounds redundant but we do this to track each specimen). We also band patients that are admittted as some type of alert be it stroke alert, etc because they are unknown at that point. My question is...is the standard practice to reband anytime a new specimen is required or do you honor the three day rule and just label it with the current band label (in addition to the required patient information) until the three days are up?? Also if an unknown patient is admitted and blood bank testing is performed with patient labeled Jane Doe, how do you correlate the band labeled Jane Doe once the patient's information is entered into the computer system especially if more product is ordered? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
