Calling all Magic users...

I'm looking for a way for the lab to order two units for our antibody patients but not make them seen by nursing as "transfuse these units now". It's our policy to order two LRBC on our inhouse antibody patients but there is a potential for clinical staff to see two units in ready status and assume they're for transfusion. How do others deal with this? Do you have separate "give" or "transfuse" orders? Do you change the units to some kind of custom inactive status?

Thanks,

Becky

We have a customer defined screen that has a comment section on it. If the pt's hgb is greater than 9.0, the screen goes to the comment section and we enter the comment "MMC policy for positive antibody screen", and then we order and crossmatch 2 units. Other than that, we do not differentiate our XMs and we do not use the READY or the HOLD status functions. You could ask for a copy of the transfusion orders of these special pts if you want the RN to recheck, but do you really have a problem with RNs transfusing without the specific orders to do so or is it a rare problem because they respond to READY units in your computer system? Do you have the Hgb linked to RBC orders so it comes up when you are issuing so you could review it and probably stop a transfusion where the hgb was high - probably an error?

Thanks for your response. We do have the hgb linked so it appears during different steps of resulting/issuing. I'll just say that there is a potential for a nurse to assume transfusion orders based on unit RDY status even when the hgb is "acceptable" for a transfusion.

What is your unit status when it is ready to be issued?

"What is your unit status when it is ready to be issued?" Quote

Our units are in XM Compatible status. We do not use the "Ready" function of the Meditech system. Just chose not to back during the build process - probably because we weren't too familiar with it and didn't know quite how it would work long term (inexperienced trainer couldn't explain it well either). The RNs weren't used to looking for that information in the computer with our previous system either. We do a lot of calling to let the RNs know the units are "ready" and have a lot of calls back "Is it ready yet?".

When we issue them, the units go to Issued status and then I have the computer automatically move them to Presumed Transfused status after 4 hours. Hope that helps.

This is a huge help! Thanks so much...this may work for us too. Off to test some stuff