Who can check out blood products?

[shelleyk482]

Who does your facility allow to be the 2nd person (the first being a tech) checking out blood from the Blood Bank?

Our current policy is that an RN must be the second person doing the check out procedure. For the floors this translates to only allowing RN's to come to pick up blood products. OR & ED can send a PCT, aide or transporter to pick up blood but if they do, then 2 med techs must do the check-put procedure. I am wanting to change the policy to allow nursing personnel (RN's, PCT's, Aides & transporters) to be the 2nd person doing the check out procedure because tying up 2 techs (we're a relatively small lab) slows down TAT during trauma's and massively bleeding surgery cases.

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

Who does your facility allow to be the 2nd person (the first being a tech) checking out blood from the Blood Bank?

Our current policy is that an RN must be the second person doing the check out procedure. For the floors this translates to only allowing RN's to come to pick up blood products. OR & ED can send a PCT, aide or transporter to pick up blood but if they do, then 2 med techs must do the check-put procedure. I am wanting to change the policy to allow nursing personnel (RN's, PCT's, Aides & transporters) to be the 2nd person doing the check out procedure because tying up 2 techs (we're a relatively small lab) slows down TAT during trauma's and massively bleeding surgery cases.

One way is to perform Task-based Training for all of them, and only those that are signed off as competent would be allowed to do this. It is time consumming at the beginning, as you would have an awful lot of people to train, but once you've got through these, the number requiring training at any one time would reduce considerably.

If you like (and this is stretching it a bit, it's like getting to the checkout at the supermarket, when they start putting through your goods whilst you are still putting stuff on at the other end. When you start to put it into the bags, it's a bit overwhelming, but as you catch up, it gets easier, and you eventually have to wait for the person on the checkout to put the goods through for you to pack (if you see what I mean - a bit obscure, I must admit).

:eek::eek:

[adiescast]

We have computer based training for all personnel who pick up blood products. We mostly have nurses and PCTs picking up blood, but we do have volunteers who do it for some areas. OR sends "Team Techs" which I think are their version of PCTs. We require it to be someone wearing a hospital badge. Generally the volunteers are more participatory than the nurses and do a more thorough check.

[JOANBALONE]

When you say "check out" do you mean reviewing the patient identifiers, unit number etc with the blood bank associate? There is no requirement, that I am aware of, that 2 people must review patient identifiers, unit numbers etc before release of units to the patient care area.

JB

[Nancy L.]

We do very similar to what Malcolm suggests. Nursing personnel or transport can come pick up the blood product. It is checked out by a blood bank tech and the transporter. The patient's complete name, wristband number, blood type, donor identification number, unit blood type, unit expiration date are all double checked by both people comparing the information in the computer, the unit, crossmatch card attached to the unit, and the blood product requisition form that must be brought by the transporter. Only those who have received competency training (which must be repeated annually) are allowed to pick up the blood. Once the transporter has the blood, they must take it directly to the nursing unit and hand it to an RN.

[adiescast]

When you say "check out" do you mean reviewing the patient identifiers, unit number etc with the blood bank associate? There is no requirement, that I am aware of, that 2 people must review patient identifiers, unit numbers etc before release of units to the patient care area.

JB

That is correct. This is not a requirement. The requirement is that the process assures patient safety. Many institutions choose to have a second person review during issue to help meet the requirement. Others say that the computer is the safety check. There are probably many ways to meet this requirement.

[JOANBALONE]

Decades ago when I started in a Transfusion Service nothing was computerized. I thought a second pair of eyes was essential when issuing units to the patient care area. Times have changed. For those of you that require a second check and have a computer system - do you find a lot of errors when performing the 1st check and/or 2nd check? Just wondering.

[tbostock]

Any hospital employee can pick up blood. When we sign out the blood they are supposed to participate by reading back of the information with us, but some are more interested than others unfortunately. So in those cases the Blood Bank tech has to do their own "double checking". Yes, we have caught minor errors doing this: for example, registration changed a patient's name or DOB after admission. Next year we will send up units by pneumatic tube, so we will have 2 techs do the checking before the unit goes out.

[kate murphy]

Any hospital staff, though usually Transport personnel, can check blood with us. They must present with patient name and medical record number, and that is the only information they are required to check. All units are issued in the computer, all units are ISBT and all are scanned prior to issue.

We also use the pneumatic tube to issue blood - the same request slip is sent thruough the p-tube to us, name/MRN must match and we send it to the station indicated on the request slip. One tech and the computer check the blood. If the request slip does not come back to us to verify receipt, we call.

We did use the "secure send" option of the p-tube system, (password required to retrieve the canister), but it was very cumbersome and slowed the entire system too much.

There is no FDA or MA state regualtion that governs this.

[tricore]

Many years ago I asked our hospital administrator if volunteers could pick up blood. After all they push patients around in wheelchairs. Think of the liability if they dump someone out. He said they could pick up products since we check it out in the BB with read back and the nurses check it on the unit before they transfuse it (hopefully - I am sure we all have stories about that!). It doesn't matter who physically carries it. The volunteers are covered under the hospital insurance. He was also the insurance officer. One day the ICU was so busy they sent the hospital chaplain to pick up blood. As far as read back by the person picking up the product, I used to work with a tech who would deliberately read the number incorrectly if he could see that the person picking up the product wasn't paying attention.

[adiescast]

Decades ago when I started in a Transfusion Service nothing was computerized. I thought a second pair of eyes was essential when issuing units to the patient care area. Times have changed. For those of you that require a second check and have a computer system - do you find a lot of errors when performing the 1st check and/or 2nd check? Just wondering.

We have found very few errors this way, although most have been that the bracelet number sent by the floor did not match the bracelet number we had. That is a pretty serious error, but it was never caught by the person transporting the blood, so I would argue that the computer can easily be the second check (if you want one).

[Eoin]

We allow Nursing, Care Assistants and Porters to collect - but only after training and competency assessment and we do have BloodTrack.

Cheers

Eoin

[mjshepherd]

At our facility we only allow RN, LPN, MT, or MD (believe it or not some anesthesiologists will pick up units) check out/ transport blood due to the high rate of turn over/ travel for our nurse and surgical techs. If we tried to train all of them we would be doing it constantly.