New Employee Training in Blood Bank

[applejw]

My director has requested information about how other comparable hospitals train new employees so I thought I would try this group to get a handle on length of training. 

• We are a 700 bed hospital with 6 satellite facilities - 5 of which send us their antibody identifications. 
• We have 2 Ortho Visions and irradiate our own blood products. 
• We have a 30-40 bed NICU and transfuse very sick premature infants. 
• We do not wash or deglycerolize red cells.
• We are a Level 1 Trauma Center performing upwards of 150 Massive Transfusion activations per year.
• We transfused approximately 29,000 blood products last year. 
• Day shift is staffed primarily with MT that work only in Blood Bank; 2nd and 3rd shift is comprised primarily of MLT that are generalists and rotate coverage throughout other areas of the laboratory.

Our existing training period is 6 weeks with the last week being skill assessment.  Based on our most recent experience, we have asked leadership to make the training program longer than 6 weeks to give the new hires the best chance to succeed and to prevent failure with our patients.  The most recent hires have been new graduate MLT (some have yet to take the ASCP exam) and  MLT/MT that haven't been exposed to Blood Bank theory and practice for a long period of time.  Most of these "experienced" new hires have not worked in a facility of this size and complexity.

Any thoughts or opinions on an appropriate training period for Blood Bank newbies?

 

[Neil Blumberg]

Our typical training period in slightly larger hospital is about 3 months (twice as long as yours). Most of our trainees are recent graduates (MT).

[BBKT]

We are a smaller Level 1 Trauma Center, 600 beds, 13,000 transfusions last year with1 Vision.  We do not irradiate or wash blood.  We are lucky in that all techs work only in Blood Bank (which includes the Coag lab).  We like an 8 week training period.

[Cliff]

On 11/5/2019 at 4:10 PM, applejw said:

Any thoughts or opinions on an appropriate training period for Blood Bank newbies?

Until they are ready. 

We used to train for about 3 months, now we're creeping up on 4 months and we don't train everybody on everything.

We're a little over 800 beds, level I trauma, NICU, large labor with lots of high risk patients, 40+ ORs, we also support a large cancer institute.  We issue about 34,000 RBCs, 13,000 platelets.  Close to 100,000 type and screens.  We have a very busy reference lab.  We also have a donor center, and the blood bank processes the units.  We have molecular testing, but only a few people are trained there.

It's really hard to go back and retrain people later so we put a fair amount of effort into reviewing their progress as they are training.

[Ensis01]

Not sure if this response is too late.

After your new hires receive 6 weeks training and pass the test are they then expected to be competent in your blood Bank? What exactly are they expected to be able to deal with?

My opinion (and experience in a similar setting) is that you have trained your new hires in the theory of your Blood Bank; the next 3 (probably more) months will/should provide practical training in how to use those skills in practice, increasing complexity and especially under pressure.