In our current computer system (Meditech 5.6), we created a mother-baby identification number that appears on the cord blood tube and the requisition and the armbands. June 1 we will be upgrading to Meditech 6.0 and the mother-baby number can no longer be pulled into the requisition. I tried to stress the importance of being able to tie the baby to the correct mother and the nursing staff looked at me like I had 3 heads. They actually suggested putting 2 labels on the cord blood specimen (mother and baby), since "it is really the same blood".

How do others collect and identify cord blood specimens to ensure correct mother-baby correlation? I would especially be interested in anyone else who has Meditech 6.0.

Our cord bloods come down labeled with a nursing unit patient label. In addition to all the identification info for the baby this label has the Mom's first name and FIN on it to use as a tie back to the Mom.

Cord blood labeling is really a bad problem. The cord blood comes down labeled with Mom's ID information. The only baby information on the sample is the gender (sometimes) and the bracelet number. The order comes down with the baby's ID information. What we did was to have the computer pull mother's ID information and print it on the requisition so that we can correlate the sample. Alas, we had a computer change last weekend that seems to have thrown that off...hopefully we will be able to get that repaired soon!

Edited May 6, 201114 yr by adiescast
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Why is it that OB nurses are so...dare I say...dense about labeling cord samples. Up until about a year ago, we got well labeled specimens with mom's name and MR# plus baby's ID number (not MR#, but another number which was assigned at birth and attached to mom's record, also) and sex. Worked great and we had near 100% compliance for almost 6 years. They decided to drop the assigned ID number because 98% of babies are preadmitted when mother is admitted, so they wanted to use the MR#. Ducky, except they don't use anything now. We get tubes labeled with mom's name and MR# and baby's sex (if we're lucky). Now, think twins (they don't!). I get 2 cord blood samples labeled with mom's name and MR# and baby's sex. If both babies are boys, both tubes are labeled identically. OR, they label one tube baby A and one tube baby B with orders that come down for baby 1 and baby 2. When I approach them about this problem and try to get them to use a unique identifier for the babies, they tell me "we've NEVER done it that way before". ARGHHHH!!! as Charlie Brown used to say in the funny papers!

We had the same sort of problem with mother's name on cord bloods. I think it took a set of twins and an "issue" to force the OB department to register each infant and label the cord blood containers with the appropriate infant registration information including the unique medical record number. After about a month for all shifts to adjust to the new process, we have had 100% compliance for at least 5 years.

We require the baby's label on the cord blood. When they enter the cord blood eval test in the computer system (we have Epic), they have to enter the mother's MR#, because our Blood Bank system (SoftBank) requires that to "tie" the mom to the baby.

We get at least 2-3 mislabeled cord blood samples per month (usually labeled with mom's label instead of baby's label); so I agree with A McCord above that the nurses really don't seem to get it.

95% of our cord samples are labeled with the mother's computer generated label - with handwritten "cord blood" and date/time of collection and by whom. Our computer generated order has an informational data point for the mother's MR#. this provides our correlation.

we use Meditech 5.4 so I know what you mean. I recently had a meeting with the OB charge nurse and we are now labeling the cord bloods with baby's name and MR number and they hand write mom's name on it or put a piece of mom's label on it too. Meditech then links the two together under Mom's name and MR.

At a previous hospital [sSM], they had the last name of baby, mom first name and baby girl on the tube for the cord blood.

In our current computer system (Meditech 5.6), we created a mother-baby identification number that appears on the cord blood tube and the requisition and the armbands. June 1 we will be upgrading to Meditech 6.0 and the mother-baby number can no longer be pulled into the requisition. I tried to stress the importance of being able to tie the baby to the correct mother and the nursing staff looked at me like I had 3 heads. They actually suggested putting 2 labels on the cord blood specimen (mother and baby), since "it is really the same blood".

How do others collect and identify cord blood specimens to ensure correct mother-baby correlation? I would especially be interested in anyone else who has Meditech 6.0.