I would like to know what people use when they issue blood to the floors. I am getting a lot of repercussion from the floors here in our hospital. They have used coolers for years, not monitored, so they still have to get it to the floor right away. The coolers also sometimes e get used to bring specimens down to the lab. Every other place I have worked used biohazard bags or even plain bags to transport the blood. I have switched to biohazard bags here and the nurses are all complaining that it is "cold and not compassionate" since visitors may see it.

   I would like to have feedback.

    Thanks

plain bags here.  

Someone once posted a story of a visitor fainting from the site of a unit of blood being transported so they switched to opaque bags. 

Pneumatic tube delivery solved all of our transport problems. 

Biohazard Bags

Clear bags, for sure.  If I'm a patient getting a transfusion, I do not want to see a biohazard bag containing the blood that they are going to give me.  Opaque bags can get placed on a nursing station somewhere and tossed to the side because folks do not know that there is blood in there!!

Clear bags - blood products are not considered a biohazard (I thought - if my memory serves me correctly on this "Friday where have you been?!!)

Here, if the units do not have to be in a monitored cooler, they just transport them by hand.

Scott

Coolers (Credo line) for more than one unit or across the parking lot, and by hand for single units.  Tried clear bags for awhile, and the nurses hated that because it was just one more plastic bag that had to be thrown out and added to our mountain of trash.   We already use a ton of plastic bags (biohazard and plain) for our specimen transport.  Our tube system is too small, fast and old to transport blood in.

We put it in a clear biohazard plastic bag, then inside a colored plastic bag for this purpose..we actually ordered the small colored plastic bags from the gift shop.  They work!  LOL

We use the Final Check lock system. The bags that go with that are clear with a biohazard symbol on it. We've never gotten any comments. We've been doing it that way for years and everyone seems to be OK with it.

Clear Biohazard bag inside an insulated bag

https://www.hopkinsmedicalproducts.com/medical-specimen-transport-components/p/Insulated-Bio-Transport-Bag/

 

We use a opaque purple bag.  I like to refer to it as the "party " gift bag.  My director asked that we do this.  It wasn't necessary to use a bio-hazard bag.

If the blood product isn't going to be started right away or just to have on hand due to a procedure being perform the blood is sent in a cooler under wet ice. The coolers are validated to maintain a temperature of 1-10 degrees for 8 hours. But we switch the ice out at 4 hours if the cooler is still out.

For the transport if not needed in a cooler the blood is sent in a clear zip lock bag.

clear plastic bags