Patient Antibody Notification

[Michaele]

Good morning, does anyone notify the patient if an atypical antibody is found? I am considering sending a card to patients, notifying them of atypical antibodies, in case they go to a different hospital.

We just had a case of this last night. A patient who has a hx of Jka, with her last Antibody Screen Negative (3 mo ago). She came in last night, her antibody screen is now positive and the Jka is back. Come to find out, she had gone to another hospital for a transfusion and they didn't have the hx of Jka.

If you do this, would you be willing to share your policy or letter, etc? Thanks-

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

We give evrybody cards.

[Mary Ann]

Good morning, does anyone notify the patient if an atypical antibody is found? I am considering sending a card to patients, notifying them of atypical antibodies, in case they go to a different hospital.

We just had a case of this last night. A patient who has a hx of Jka, with her last Antibody Screen Negative (3 mo ago). She came in last night, her antibody screen is now positive and the Jka is back. Come to find out, she had gone to another hospital for a transfusion and they didn't have the hx of Jka.

If you do this, would you be willing to share your policy or letter, etc? Thanks-

Yes,my facility issues cards and can be most helpful.

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

Apart from the usual awful spelling, what I meant was we give cards to everyone who has an antibody - not just to everyone!!!!!!!!!!

[jayinsat]

A facility where I previously worked sent antibody cards to the patients. They were helpful to other facilities SOMETIMES. Often, the patients lost them, never presented them or just plain ignored them. Some patients would get confused and panic because of them, thinking we either gave them a disease or had some rare blood disorder that they should worry about. No matter how we worded the letter, we would get several phone calls/week asking us to explain what the card/letter meant.

That said, I would still send them as they were helpful when the patients presented them to our facility upon admission. Well, that is, if the nurse decided to share that information with the blood bank.

Just know you will get calls.

[KarenJ]

We don't give cards, but our blood center has an antibody registry and we enter antibodies on the site. Part of our history check includes checking the registry. We have found 3 patients with clinically significant antibodies on the site, and negative screens.

[Mabel Adams]

I created a card at my prior workplace that we never really put into use. It had our lab's contact info on it. It included instructions to the patient on when and to whom to present the card, then it had instructions to that person to send a copy to the blood bank (it was a fold-over wallet card) . The few times I used it were for frequent transfusion patients with antibodies that were moving out of the area and for some with weak antibodies (mostly Jka) that we picked up in gel that I knew the other smaller hospitals in the area wouldn't detect with tube testing. In those cases I called the patient's nurse and explained the situation and answered questions.

At my current facility we send letters to primary care physicians. We used to send them cards for the patients too but they didn't want them and the patient never reappeared with the card at least that the blood bank heard of. I don't think it accomplishes anything to have the docs have a letter; they never seem to do anything about it.

The regional registry sounds great! I think I heard that our ARC has thought about it. How is all the HIPAA stuff managed? Is patient ID ever questionable?

[KarenJ]

It is set up so that everyone allowed to access it has a password, and is a secure site. Each hospital has a person who can enter antibodies as well. Since our supplier is also our reference lab, we have always sent specimens for identification to them, and they maintained a list of antibodies they had found. The patients are listed by name and date of birth.