How many of you have a Transfusion Safety officer (TSO) at your hospital?

If you don't have one, is the role just taken by the BB supervisor ?

I see UBS offers a TSO curriculum program.  I wonder if it would be beneficial for a BB supervisor who does not have a TSO to attend.

Definitely interested in responses to this post, thank you for posting!

That's an interesting and ultimately highly subjective question. A lot of people would posit that a TSO should have a clinical background to be effective. https://www.linkedin.com/title/transfusion-safety-officer

Curious of the opinion of BBT.

In the UK, this position is largely covered by the Transfusion Practitioner, who may have a nursing background, or a Biomedical Scientist background, but they report to the Consultant in Charge of Blood Transfusion.

Good Morning-

I have attended the UBS course,  and have found it extremely valuable. I am a blood bank manager and we do NOT have either a TSO position in our hospital, nor have we a formal blood management program.

I used the knowledge I gained to empower transfusion committee to push for several blood management strategies to be implemented, and our organization is realizing great benefits since I attended the class in Sep 2014.

We have reduced transfusions by over 50% and are still realizing continued reductions 14 months later. We are predominantly orthopedics based, and after a presentation to our arthroplasty group this past fall, we are in the process of writing/publishing our process improvement project as best practices in orthopedics.

The class was comprised of~50% each RN's and Blood Bank supervisors/managers, and there were sessions included to help each background learn/understand each other's roles and what they bring to a TSO position. The rest of the class is very good as well---highly technical and indepth in many subjects despite the actual brevity of the full course. Strong BB, donor collection, and quality tools is helpful as the course does help push you to the next level.

My belief is the best background for the TSO'---IF the basis of your program is to also advocate for strong blood management processes to be employed, can be either professional background as long as they are set to colloborate well between BB and various medical disciplines, because without their buy in, the benefits of a trememdous amount of hard work that needs to be put in, may wind up being minimal/unsustainable.

Just one colleagues journey--hope it helps and if anyone has more questions on the course or how I used the lessons learned, I'm happy to try to help!

That is exactly what I was hoping to hear Linda !  

 

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.   I will definitely be putting in a request to go next year.  

On 12/21/2015 at 7:11 AM, Linda0623 said:

 as long as they are set to colloborate well between BB and various medical disciplines, because without their buy in, the benefits of a trememdous amount of hard work that needs to be put in, may wind up being minimal/unsustainable.

 

There's the key right there. The easy things to do are the ones you have total control over. The difficult ones are when they involve other areas.....

Canada has had TSOs since ~2000. They were first instituted in Quebec where there are now 54 TSOs. In Quebec a technologist TSO is always paired with nurse (RN) TSO. The situation varies in other provinces, with technologists forming the majority, also sometimes responsible for lab quality assurance.  We've had a mailing list since 2000 and a website since 2002 (I'm the webmaster, list manager): http://www.transfusionsafety.ca/

For interest, sample job descriptions:

• http://www.transfusionsafety.ca/about-tso.html

Cheers, Pat

http://www.ualberta.ca/~pletendr/

Edited December 25, 20159 yr by blut
spacing issue