Pyxis System Coordination

[Lbiggs]

Are there any facilities currently coordinating with Pharmacy's Pyxis system or similar program to issue and transfuse blood products? Has anyone ever looked into a similar Transfusion Services program? Are any facilities currently using the TypeSafe Typenex product? What is the safest way that you know to issue and transfuse blood products that eliminates all room for human error or a majority of human error? The Med Techs at our 25 bed critical access hospital are curious as to why we couldn't just coordinate with the Pyxis system since out lead Lab assistant is resistant about incorporating safer patient identification measures through blood banding or retyping. She believes that it is against Planetree philosophy and delays patient care.

[Eagle Eye]

Are there any facilities currently coordinating with Pharmacy's Pyxis system or similar program to issue and transfuse blood products? Has anyone ever looked into a similar Transfusion Services program? Are any facilities currently using the TypeSafe Typenex product? What is the safest way that you know to issue and transfuse blood products that eliminates all room for human error or a majority of human error? The Med Techs at our 25 bed critical access hospital are curious as to why we couldn't just coordinate with the Pyxis system since out lead Lab assistant is resistant about incorporating safer patient identification measures through blood banding or retyping. She believes that it is against Planetree philosophy and delays patient care.

By implementing typenex banding if you are going to improve patient care and your techs are already up for it, you need to convince nursing and go for it.

There is a really expensive referigerator for blood products just like Pyxis but made for blood products more secure then Pysix (I believe). I do not recall name, we have several discussions on this forum, I will look for it.

[Mabel Adams]

Type Safe is a segment sampling device.  Is that what you meant?  They have a blood lock device called FinalCheck.

[DOGLOVER]

It sounds like you folks need to speak with your lab director about this. How are you answering the CAP standardTRM.40300 if you don't have a historical record?

[Lbiggs]

They have been using a card filing system for the historical record. FinalCheck was the system I am looking into. The lab manager asked me to do the research to find out what system would provide excellent patient identification and transfusion safety with minimal cost and minimal extra duties for the phlebotomist. They claim that there has never been misidentification of patient with their current antiquated system of just using hospital label on tube, no specific blood armband, and no retypes. This concerns me, so I brought it to the lab manager's attention and was asked to do the research. The AABB tech manual had no set guidelines, just suggestions for best lab practice. I am trying to incorporate some of the safety measures with huge resistance from the phlebotomy lead. Thank you all for your comments, they are very helpful in my decision making process for better safer practices in the transfusion setting.

[AMcCord]

Sounds like you have some co-workers who are having trouble thinking outside of the box. It's hard to change if you can't see beyond what you've always done. One of our retired employees was fond of saying....."So, what are you going to tell the lawyer when you are in court?" every time a patient safety issue came up. In this case, a patient dies or suffers a severe transfusion reaction and the reply would be..."We've sorry a bad thing happened to your loved one but we've never misidentified a patient before." Stick to your guns. It may take awhile but persist.

[tbostock]

Unless the Pyxis system is FDA approved for blood products (which I doubt), you wouldn't be able to use it.

I did not have good luck with separate blood bands. The best thing we found for patient safety is having 2 independently drawn blood types before giving type specific blood.

[David Saikin]

We use Blood Locs . . . number attached to pt on admission.  The only place it exists is on the pt.  when a BB spec is obtained, the BLcode is added to the label. when blood is signed out it goes into a special bag and a combination lock is added that uses the pt BLcode.   Can only be opened by the code on the pt id band.  If the lock does not open either you are trying to give the blood to the wrong pt or the lab tech entered the code incorrectly.

 

this is barrier protections so we don't need 2 different blood types to progress to transfusion.  Typenex has just come out with a similar product called Final Check.

[Eagle Eye]

Type Safe is a segment sampling device.  Is that what you meant?  They have a blood lock device called FinalCheck.

Ooops I was thinking about Tyepenex Band...The original poster was talking about Type Safe which is similar to hematype segment device used to get the blood out of the segment. I believe Hematype(Baxter) is more expensive product...we switched to Type safe last year, there was some resistance from techs but they got used to it.

[Sheryl Kochman]

The list of cleared BECS (Blood Establishment Computer Software), including those for transfusion safety management can be found on FDA's website at:

 

http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/BloodBloodProducts/ApprovedProducts/SubstantiallyEquivalent510kDeviceInformation/ucm134987.htm

 

[Mabel Adams]

The Challenger disaster happened when they were relying on the fact that they had never had a space shuttle crash before.

 

Can you send the lead phleb on a field trip to a larger hospital in the region that uses a banding system or some such?