Hi all!

I was wondering how other facilities/hospitals label their blood units after crossmatching? Does anyone use label stickers and place it on the unit or just use crossmatch tags in paper? 

PAPER TAGS PRINTED ON A DMP PRINTER

 

Ours print on a 4" x 4" label from a Zebra type printer. We stick them on a slightly larger tag made from card stock with an eyelet at the top for a rubber band. The back of the card stock tag is printed with a list of transfusion reaction symptoms and a brief description of response expected. Below that are blood handling instructions/education. All nursing documentation is in Epic.

we use both.....

our tags have a sticker on them.  when they print - all the pertinent info from the tag is on the sticker.  we place the sticker on the back of the unit at the time of tagging.

we got dinged during an inspection because the nurses took the tag off the unit while it was hanging....... the sticker solves that.....if they take the tag off - the required info is still on the unit.

we do this with all our blood products.

we currently use SCC-Soft Bank

Edited August 4, 20231 yr by Bet'naSBB

The back cardboard copy of the computer generated bag tag with the patient and unit information is attached to the unit at the time of issue. 

We print ours on a 4x4 adhesive label and place the label on the back of the unit at issue.

2 hours ago, Bet'naSBB said:

we use both.....

our tags have a sticker on them.  when they print - all the pertinent info from the tag is on the sticker.  we place the sticker on the back of the unit at the time of tagging.

we got dinged during an inspection because the nurses took the tag off the unit while it was hanging....... the sticker solves that.....if they take the tag off - the required info is still on the unit.

we do this with all our blood products.

we currently use SCC-Soft Bank

We recently got dinged because of this! We use Cerner Community Works and I don't think they have that template built in Blood Bank to print patient labels for the units

We use Softbank and print a bag label with patient/donor/product information that adheres directly to the bag.

We use a paper tag with a pre-attached sticky label. The tag has all kinds of info printed on it for the nurses edification, such as transfusion rxn info, only use saline, etc. The computer prints all the patient/donor info on the tag and also on the sticky label which we place on the unit at issue. The tag is primarily used at the bedside for the required checks but the unit itself is scanned into the computer and completed in the computer.  If the computer is down or goes down, the nurse will revert back to the paper tag to complete the transfusion. The label stays on the unit throughout the transfusion. That has been beaten into their heads over the years.

The tags are a specialty type print and are expensive but it is what it is. It took months of committee meetings to approve the tag we have now and every nurse had an opinion about what should be on the tag. 

We print bag tags on ISBT Q3Q4 label stock which we then put on manila tags and use a plastic tie to attach them to the units.  This way we can use the same printers and label stock for making labels for 5-day plasma.  Our nurses document in Epic or on downtime transfusion records that have space for a duplicate of the bag tag labels.

On 8/4/2023 at 11:34 AM, mollymotos said:

We recently got dinged because of this! We use Cerner Community Works and I don't think they have that template built in Blood Bank to print patient labels for the units

the sticker is an actual part of the unit tag - so when the tag prints, the sticker is on it and gets printed as well

We put the sticky patient identification label on the blood unit and attach a paper "crossmatch card" to the unit with a plastic tagger.  When we issue the blood products, we check the information the courier brings with both the patient sticker and the crossmatch card.

I'm curious, years ago we were looking into printing stickers to apply directly to the bag but there was some concern about applying an adhesive to the bag that may not have been FDA approved for such use.  Is this still an issue or was our QA department going off the deep end?

I think that is still in effect. The last time I ordered rolls of 4x4 labels for modified products, the description stated they were acceptable for placing on blood products.