septima

Getting your SBB is great knowledge to have, and I agree with Cliff that it will open more doors for you to do other things. Having worked in large busy trauma center BB's for 17 years now, I can tell you that my SBB knowledge rarely comes into play in a hospital BB, unless you have ALL the things (complex antibodies, washing/irradiating product, neonatal population, ref lab for system hospitals etc). If you have goals of Ref Lab or a private company, many of them require an SBB. You can also get in with a teaching program with an SBB easier than without. I've heard many hospital labs would like to have their admin directors be blood bankers with an SBB, as it brings a quality eye that other candidates don't have, but it seems rare to find those people because so few of us want to do that job!  As far as helping you run your blood bank, it likely won't be that beneficial, as most of the curriculum is a deep dive into antibody qualities and rare things, but there is some info on supervisory duties and such. 
I graduated from LifeShare's SBB online program in 2019, after having worked in the BB for 10+ years. I personally liked the online program, as I already was the supervisor of the BB at the time, had two small kids and was not able to move across country to attend a program in person. LifeShare and UTMB share their curriculum, and an SBB from LifeShare is eligible to go on to the Masters in Trans. Med from UTMB should you wish to do that. Katrina Billingsley is the director of the program at LifeShare, and she is fabulous; would highly recommend her program. 

We have the HemoSafe in our OR area as well as three BloodSafe controlled small refrigerators with kiosks and magentic locks distributed throughout our facility for massive transfusions. We are very happy with their performance.
A word about the "coolers as storage" idea: When we had our AABB assessment in 2009, the assessors threw that at us as well. I knew it sounded wrong, (not to mention the fact that our assessment was prior to the effective date of that standard) but at the audioconference for the changes, which unfortunately didn't take place until a few weeks later, Debbie Kessler made it very clear that blood sent to the OR in coolers is "transport", not "storage", as long as the time period doesn't exceed what the cooler is validated for. She said "the cooler is transporting blood out to the OR and back to the transfusion service with a pause in the OR". I made very detailed notes about this so that we could respond to the variance.
That said, I would still recommend the HemoSafe if your budget allows. You are able to maintain tighter control over your inventory and keep detailed logs about their disposition.

Please help PathLabTalk to grow.  We now have a referral system so we can see who has referred the most members to the site.
Why would we want to track such a thing?  Easy, we're doing it as part of a contest.
Whomever refers the most people to the site (a minimum of 10 people) by January 31, 2017, will win a fitness tracker of their choice, up to a $200 value!  
So, just how do you do this?, it's really simple.
Go here then copy the Referrer URL.  Send that link to all of your friends and coworkers.  When they join, your name will automatically be filled in as the referrer in the registration form.  The main page of this site will list the top referrers so you can track your progress.
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This is a fun drug (I really need a sarcastic font!).  We have added a order into the HIS order sets for multiple myeloma diagnoses to include a molecular genotype before the drug is initiated.  Hopefully, that will help!