Simon1994

Yes, Indeed it will be more fun.

Great! You are such an adventurous and devoted person. Wish you best of luck for your next climb, and keep us updated with your pictures. 

It does not say that . . . in fact I don't believe any regulatory agency requires Management to be competent in any area of the lab - as long as they do not perform any testing.  If they test, they have to have a competency.

I worked at a blood center for years and used the Raycell Mk2 (the 3.5L model, the larger model that can do up to 6 RBCs at once). It was a pain to install and maintain the water source to cool the system. During the colder months (in the Northeast US), the water source had to be bypassed because it was too cold. We had to keep tweaking the pump and the filter system until we found one that could handle our municipal water--amazing how much sediment is in it! The Mk2 was down a LOT, IMHO. It was not like Best Theratronics Cesium irradiator, which was almost NEVER down, but which nevertheless had to be replaced (a) because it could only do 1 RBC at a time, and (b) because of the onus of all the security and NRC regulations. Because it was down so much, and the blood center had to maintain a supply of irradiated blood/platelet products, we had to ask a local hospital to irradiate for us, sometimes for several days at a time. Having said that, I did hear that a nearby hospital was using the Mk2 2.0L model, the smaller one that can do up to 4 RBCs at once, and it was almost never down... You HAVE to consider that the X-ray tubes have to be replaced every 7 years or so, at a considerable expense. Best Theratronics is a Canadian company. Not that I have anything against our neighbor to the north, but the equipment was more than once held up by customs, and PM or repair was delayed, sometimes by several days. I am now at a hospital transfusion service (the one that I used to send the blood center's irradiation to during down-time!), and back to using the Cs-137 GammaCell 1000 irradiator. Because of all the security/NRC compliance issues, I would love to switch to an X-ray irradiator. In my research, I found the Rad Source RS-3400 quite appealing. The sales person at the company said that all PM & repairs--including the X-ray source replacement, are covered by the maintenance contract (15k/year). And this is an American company, so no customs delays! Carrie M., what has your experience been since you switched a year ago? Are you happy that you changed from the Raycell? Again, I would love to go away from the Cs irradiator, and I'd love to hear the comparison/contrast between the Raycell & the RS-3400 from someone who has experience with both.

True that There are I guess very fewer people who spent quality time with their families.

It is interesting nice share!!

I don't see any reason to perform a weak D on a patient with an anti-D as you are going to give Rh negative blood anyway, unless like Malcolm said, the DAT came out positive.  Why do additional testing with no clinical value?  If the patient DOES type positive with Weak D, then I assume you would change the blood type to Rh positive and still need to give negative blood.  Seems to me like that would just be confusing to most folks (clinicians and technologists) for no reason.