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Disposal of blood bags and administration sets post transfusion


bmarotto

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Two questions about how your hospital handles the disposal of blood bags/sets post transfusion:

1. How are blood bags and administration sets disposed of...regular or biohazard trash?

2. Are the patient identifiers (label or tie tag) removed before disposal?

Thanks.

Bev

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Thanks Denny. The reason I ask is becasue a waste management consultant said items not "saturated with blood" could go in regular trash. Some nursing units take this to include empty blood bags. Call me old fashioned but I rather have them go in Biohazard trash. We send a two part tie tag..one copy is charted and the other remains on the unit at all times. If it ends up in regular trash, we have a privacy problem. I am not concerned about Biohazard trash which is incinerated. All the lab specimens go in Biohazard trash and we certainly do not remove the patient ID labels from them before disposal!

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Your waste management consultant is correct as far as OSHA is concerned. (I was the safety officer for our lab for many years). However, there might be stricter laws in place for your state, or wherever your biohazard trash goes. That being said, I believe that an empty blood bag should be considered biohazard. Just a few segments left on the bag, along with the blood left in the bag itself and the tubing can add up to a fair amount of liquid waste.

:blahblah:

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