Questions about assigning roles and responsibilities

 

    Currently in our institution we have management assigned the role of performing computer overrides.  The management is anyone from a lead, technical specialist, quality specialist, assistant supervisor and supervisor.  These roles really have no required qualifications for "years" of work.  Only that they are medical technologists. 

 

 There have recently been some rumblings about the role of management in performing computer overrides.  Are they really the right people to perform this overriding when they may in fact, not understand the process or the actual factor they may be overriding.  The technologist may be able to communicate that with the management person or perhaps they may not.  While historically management has "always had this role" of overriding...are they really the right people to perform this? 

 

   How do you determine who has the ability to perform an override in your institution.  Is it based on a competency test?  Years of service?  Role based only?  Comments?

 

 Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We may not agree, whoever got the title  have the privilege to override. Length of service does't give you privilege to override in our dept.

I agree that length of service does not give you the ability to perform overrides, but how do you decide who is able to override factors in the computer?

Most of the time ONE is the only Blood Banker in the lab at our hospital, therefore everyone gets to override so they can perform their job.  I wouldn't want a person with just a computer title doing this either.  We have a report that is generated that I review for all overrides & if it was something preventable the person is at a minimum verbally counseled later on.  But, I haven't had any situations of abuse of this priviledge. 

It seems to me that it is moot whether or not someone authorized to do an override has the correct knowlege (on thier own) for the task at hand. 

 

But a manager or supervisor is paid to take responsibility.  A manager should be smart enough to ask questions and further investigate, if necessary, in order to take responsibility for a particular decision.

 

If they can't do that, they maybe should not be managers.

 

My two cents, Scott

I would say that anyone who is a super user of the system that knows the "why" or anyone trained to understand the "why" of the particular override, could theoretically have permission to do it.

Only 2 of us have override capability in my Blood Bank: myself and one other tech/super user (that went to school for the system, etc). I would not be comfortable giving that ability to any other manager that does not know Blood Bank. And I can't imagine any of them would be brave enough to make that call.

Only 2 of us have override capability in my Blood Bank: myself and one other tech/super user (that went to school for the system, etc). I would not be comfortable giving that ability to any other manager that does not know Blood Bank. And I can't imagine any of them would be brave enough to make that call.

Ditto in our Blood Bank.

We have dedicated Blood Bankers (no generalists) and all can override if needed.

Thanks everyone for adding your thoughts.