HELLO ALL, I hope someone is out there. I am a "long time listener", "first time caller". I work at a small, approx 130 bed hospital. We have recently merged with another hospital, but we have a separate computer system, etc, etc. We are on Meditech magic,sans EMR, and really all goes fairly well. However, to come in line with the mothership, our lab supervisor and rn manager want to toss the affixed transfusion card when the unit is emptied. Currently the patient verification and start and stop times are recorded on this and put in the pt's chart. Now they want to use the common form, so verifying info from the hang tag but all documentation done on a transfusion sheet, and just tossing the whole bag and hang tag when tx completed. They both assure me this is acceptable, I just have doubts about tossing this impt document. Am I being BBK paranoid"?

Two of three hospitals that I have worked at toss the unit (with tag) after transfusion is completed. We do have to remind nursing to keep the bag with attached filter and any other solutions when they report a suspected reaction.

We also discard the empty bag will all attached tags after an uneventful transfusion. Only those with incomplete infusions are returned, such as reactions.

Our tags go bye-bye with the bags. All documentation for the transfusion is on a worksheet in the EMR and prior to the EMR, it was on a paper transfusion flow sheet on the patient chart.

Hang tag goes with empty unit in biohazard here. All times, etc. documented on transfusion record form of which one copy goes to chart and the other to blood bank for review.

I have worked at three hospitals in my 42 year career. Two of the three toss the unit and card after transfusion. The third - the hospital where I trained - had the bags returned to the BBK, but the cards were thrown away by nursing. We do retain a copy of the nursing transfusion form for QA and after 30 days all of those forms are thrown away and the data is stored and can be retrieved through the BBK module in our LIS.