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blood bag disposal


nsfirm

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questions:

1. I know that it's supposed to be treated as biohazard waste, but is it a waste plastic bag, or is it supposed to be a firmer container; and whether it is in a yellow container or red container?

2. can the ward throw the blood bag on it's own or do the ward has to sent it back to blood transfusion unit?

3. do we have to throw all the contents (the blood) to a certain human liquid sink (which then will be treated as part of hospital waste management) or just let the contents inside the blood bag and put the blood bag filled with liquid inside the incinerator to be burnt?

thanks before...

nova

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I'll add to the dittos above. I've been on CAP inspections to places that return bags and if they pull the filter out, you get a leaking mess inside your biohazard bags. One place used golf tees to stick up the hole where the filter was! If you feel you need to see if the unit was given, have nursing document the completion electronically or on a form and get a copy back. Nursing should be documenting this on their end anyway.

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thank you for the replies.

as I told before, my hospital is trying to get JCI accreditation, and the consultant told me that the blood, if not transfused, has to be emptied before the blood bag can be thrown.

and to make sure that the blood is transfused, instead of asking the labels back, the consultant said it would be better to send back the blood bag complete with the blood inside.

just like banging my head to the wall.

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I don't think there is a need to send the blood bag back to prove it was transfused. That's what the administration documentation is for.

We do the same as the others stated above; we only get the bag back if we are doing a transfusion reaction workup.

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I don't believe is is necessary to discard the full bag in the biohazard waste container. If your facility contracts for biohazard waste disposal many/most companies charge by weight - full bags add unnecessary weight/cost. I'd advise emptying a full bag in a "dirty" sink, put the empty bag in the biohazrd waste and document accordingly (e.g. date/reason/method of the blood unit's disposal.)

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I would not want my techs to empty blood in sink. If we have broken plasma bag, we let it drin in sink before placing bag in plastic bag and then we send it for autoclaving.

Nursing units dispose of empty bags. We only get it back if there is a reaction. We drain leaking (broken) plasma bags in a dirty sink. The waste from washed units goes in the bio-hazard containers. We were told not to drain it into the sink. Easier for us anyway.

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We do not empty the bags in the sink. We autoclave the bag in discard autoclave and then send it for biohazard waste disposal (bwd). Our hospital contracts for bwd and they do charge by weight, but then we don't have too many bags. Although it may cost us a little, but then it is safer for all concerned.

Regarding empty bags, our policy is for all blood bags to be returned to Blood Bank for central disposal and it has nothing to do with need to send the blood bag back to prove it was transfused.

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With no disrespect to your consultant, I've not seen any reg that says you need to empty the bag before you dispose of it. Maybe you should ask him/her to cite the reg for you. And in the interest of staff safety and unnecessary exposure, do you really want them emptying a bag of blood in a dirty sink just to save a few bucks on the cost of biohazard waste?

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With no disrespect to your consultant, I've not seen any reg that says you need to empty the bag before you dispose of it. Maybe you should ask him/her to cite the reg for you. And in the interest of staff safety and unnecessary exposure, do you really want them emptying a bag of blood in a dirty sink just to save a few bucks on the cost of biohazard waste?

Very true Likewine99, goodness. Bags must remain closed and disposed of as such with any remaing blood/component.

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thank you all...

the consultant finally gives up. :) I just told that it is what happens in a country, b country, c country, etc.

about being red or not, my country has its own regulation, so the consultant has to use our regulation.

but, I have to give two thumbs up for the consultant because s/he gives in gracefully...

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  • 1 month later...

I was the safety officer in my lab for over 10 years, and the thought of having to empty a blood bag gives me the shivers! Just too much opportunity for a splash and exposure, never mind the mess. Also, with tubing and hard plastic connectors attached to the unit, it really should be in a hard sided container. The connectors (we also call them spikes) could easily poke through a plastic bag alone.

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I was the safety officer in my lab for over 10 years, and the thought of having to empty a blood bag gives me the shivers! Just too much opportunity for a splash and exposure, never mind the mess. Also, with tubing and hard plastic connectors attached to the unit, it really should be in a hard sided container. The connectors (we also call them spikes) could easily poke through a plastic bag alone.

I do feel the same way. :)

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There you go. Nine expert consultants VS one. I'll add my experience to the 9. There is no reason for empty blood bags to ever return to the transfusion service unless a transfusion rxn workup is indicated.

:bonk:

We have blood bags returned from our NICU department. Reasoning is that unfortunately the neonates there are prone to infections and our infection control people always like to implicate the blood units in causing the infection. So we keep the bags (which always contain some blood) for 48 hours post-transfusion in case the neonate does develop an infection, and if that happens then we send the bag for culture. So is this a fair reason for returning the bags? I think not, as we have never had a bag that has shown to have a bacterial infection, and we have been doing this for a long time now.

The infection rate in our NICU is probably due to the chronic overcrowding and nursing shortage that occurs there, but blaming the blood unit first is easier to do than to solve these problems.

We will go for CAP inspection in December - will they criticise me for keeping these bags in the Blood Bank?

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......So we keep the bags (which always contain some blood) for 48 hours post-transfusion in case the neonate does develop an infection, and if that happens then we send the bag for culture. ....

You do know that an open (spiked) bag can be kept for a maximum of 24 hours at the right storage temp. So having said that, beyond 24 hours if you culture the bag you may end up with a positive culture, while the bag actually did not transmit a bug to the nenate during transfusion.

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We have blood bags returned from our NICU department. Reasoning is that unfortunately the neonates there are prone to infections and our infection control people always like to implicate the blood units in causing the infection. So we keep the bags (which always contain some blood) for 48 hours post-transfusion in case the neonate does develop an infection, and if that happens then we send the bag for culture. So is this a fair reason for returning the bags? I think not, as we have never had a bag that has shown to have a bacterial infection, and we have been doing this for a long time now.

The infection rate in our NICU is probably due to the chronic overcrowding and nursing shortage that occurs there, but blaming the blood unit first is easier to do than to solve these problems.

We will go for CAP inspection in December - will they criticise me for keeping these bags in the Blood Bank?

A previous Blood Bank supervisor once said to me, "They always want to blame the blood."

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I agree with the others, the transfused unit should be discarded on the nursing floor. Maybe the inspector is looking for some form of "proof" that the transfusion is completed. Does your medical record documentation have a place for the nurses to document the "date/time ended" and amount transfused?

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