jdepew

I work at Children's of Alabama.  I was the Blood Bank supervisor for 28 years.  Then I lost my mind and went to another hospital.  I hated it there and came back to CoA,  I now manage the computer system that I installed as supervisor (SafeTrace).  I love my job.  I am at a supervisor level, but I have no direct reports.  I'm learning all the time, and nobody else knows how to do what I do.
Gerry

We clean each cooler upon return with a Sani-wipeTM and record the initials of tech cleaning the cooler on the cooler sheet. This sheet has the name, medical record number, patient's ABO/Rh and units in the cooler listed on it. Also, it contains a place for nursing to check the cooler and unit temperatures at 4 hour intervals. it is kept in a plastic sleeve on the cooler lid.

What we do is use the current cells for our QC for our antigen typing, using a heterozygous cell as a positive control for whatever antigen we are testing.  That seems periodic to me.

We use one homozygous or if absolutely necessary two heterozygous to rule out. Then 3 positives and 3 negatives reacting as expected to rule in.
Of course you always have to look at the whole picture and use your brainpower to see if you can figure anything out when things are not clear cut. Which seems to be happening more and more often these days!

I agree totally with aakupaku's comment that our method would not work for everyone, especially in an extremely busy OR or Trauma Center. We come from such a wide variety of situations around the world that it would be ludicrous to think what works best in one place would work best in all. If that was the case, we could all follow one master set of SOP's. That diversity is part of what makes this forum so valuable. Even though not everything applies to me, I appreciate reading everyone's input, learning what works other places, and gleaning what may be helpful in our blood bank. Points are brought up that I may have not thought of before. It's great that we're willing to help each other improve and advance in our knowledge base and patient care. My thanks to forum administrators and all who are willing to share.:star_full

I think that a lot of this "fixing problems that don't exist" stems from the change with CMS/CLIA when they combined all the subsections.  Immunohematology used to be separate, but now we are lumped in with Chemistry and Heme, and CMS can't quite get that blood bank is different.  Just my opinion.