Blood Bank Supervisor

[Claudia Higa]

Is anyone using an electronic document control management system? Although the Blood Bank (hospital transfusion service) has a document control system in place the laboratory is looking to implement a regional electronic system for managing documents and records.

[L106]

Yes, as we update/revise our Laboratory procedures we are putting them on our hospital's "Intranet" (and they can be accessed from any computer in the hospital.) (The original paper copy is retained in the Lab, then when the procedure is revised or discontinued the paper copy is filed by the supervisor and retained for at least 5 years.)

[Bill]

L106, why retain the paper copy when the cost of retaining electronic copy is MUCH cheaper?

[L106]

We have to have at least one copy available at all time (in case our computer system is down), so that's why we keep a paper copy in the department.

In regard to retension of the paper copy, keep in mind that we have only started putting our procedures on our Intranet for the last couple years. So, for now, throwing an outdated procedure in my file (where all my other old outdated procedures are) has been the easiest thing to do. (So we haven't tackled the long-term electronic storage yet.)

How would you suggest that we might retain the outdated electronic copy? Perhaps just move it into a different folder? (Unfortunately, we cannot post and remove them ourselves.....We have to have someone in Nursing Education do that.)

[Mary**]

I move my old procedures to a seperate folder.