Rapid Emergency Evacuation of the Blood Bank

[DeeMc]

Does anyone have a plan for a rapid emergency evacuation of the Blood Bank? For example, a fire alarm goes off and all Blood Bank personnel have to evacuate the premises. How will you handle a situation where emergency blood products are needed and you are not able to return to the Blood Bank. Do you take products with you in a cooler? Will there be time for that?

[SMILLER]

Seems like a good question. Nothing special here in our hospital that I can find. It would have to be something really bad, like a fire in the Lab or a tornado, in which case, salvaging blood would not be a high priority. I would think that any local emergency patients would be triaged to another hospital.

Or what happens when, for whatever reason, any critical department is unable to perform its function (like Lab, ER, OR). I am thinking of a toxic or bio-hazard spill, fire, etc. Does the facility notify the community emergency call people to stop patients from being sent to the facility?

Scott

[R1R2]

We have written in our SOP that if time allows and employee safety is not an issue a cooler may be packed. If time does not allow or safety is an issue employees leave without blood. We also have a designated cooler for evacuation to place blood products. It is stocked with necessary logs, phone numbers, pens, bags, etc to take in an evacuation. We do not stipulate that blood products must be packed properly as they would not be returned to inventory. We would call supplier for additional stock as soon as we relocate. We have designated relocation areas. We occasionally conduct in services to review process and procedure.

[pstruik]

We had an SOP for evacuation which detailed packing units of OPos and ONeg in a cool box, if time allowed. A copy of the SOP was kept in a plastic folder attached to the inside of the fire door of the lab (thus visible when the door closed if the fire alarm sounded) which was taken out when we evacuated, with a cordless phone out to the adjacent car-park. This detailed who to phone (A/E, Theatres etc) to tell them that Transfusion services were temporarily unavailable etc and allowed us to talk to people phoning the department to tell them what was going on. It has been used -successfully - several times (always false alarms).

[Likewine99]

SMILLER you are on the right track. If a critical department isn't able to function the ED's go on diversion. Our county has a whole "triage" kind of procedure if one of the hospitals is on diversion.

Our hospital did the diversion thing a couple of years ago. Water main break, no water coming into the hospital so they stopped admitting patients and the whole hospital was on a Code D.

Evacuation plan like R1R2 is a good idea and practice it and document it to keep the regulatory folks happy and your employees safe.

[Bill]

At least two labs that I worked in had evacuation plans--vertical, horizontal, and total. In the vertical and horizontal plans, we had built in to take blood refrigerator with us to specificed location and record temp when we got there--always within 5 min. Total ourside evacuation was to pack units in supplier boxes with ice, if time allowed.

[Mabel Adams]

I know which blood fridges/freezers are on wheels and our new ones will be. We always take the phone outside with us even for fire drills. We could improve the process, I know. I wonder what would happen if we went out for a fire drill but they never could let us back in to rescue our blood.