![]() ![]() My heart goes out to all of you who will be working the Christmas shifts. The reason I left is a long and dreary story best shared over a pint or two in the local pub.Ĭheers to you all and a very Merry Christmas. My Transfusion Service was the first to automate in the Rocky Mountain West and we never looked back or regretted it as long as I was there. (I am paraphrasing but maintaining the gist of his words.)īefore I got side tracked with my rambling I meant to convey that Automation is a great advancement for Blood Banking. It all started when the Ortho rep told me that if we didn't become an all Ortho Blood Bank we were extremely stupid. This is just my opinion on them and their equipment. I'm sure many of you are delighted with Ortho. If I had still been working there I'm sure the switch to Orthro would have precipitated my departure. Apparently the first unit they got never did work and after over a year of struggles it was finally replaced by Ortho with another one and the verdict is still out on the replacement. None of the staff are happy with the change forced on them by the cooperate mothership hospital fondly referred to as the Death Star since the day it was built. ![]() (I almost said piece of crap but didn't). They now have replaced the Immucor equipment with some Ortho stuff. There was only one Transfusion Service staff member still there from my days as the supervisor. A month ago my wife was having back surgery in that facility so while waiting I stopped in for a visit. Shortly before I left in 2009 we had up graded to the Immucor ECHO with 2 of them. We started with Immucor's ABS2000 in 1999 and kept the manual / tube technology as a backup. I would never go back to all manual testing. On those rare days when the instrument is down the tech in Blood Bank is very sad. Blood Bank is staffed with one person on days and on evenings and nights a generalist handles Blood Bank along with other responsibilities. We deliver almost 1000 babies and transfuse about 800 units of blood a year. 150 beds and 12 generalists who rotate through Blood Bank (some more than others). We are a busy rural referral facility with approx. Our MLT and CLS students learn quickly as well. MD - Transfusion Medicine, MD- Transfusion Medicine and Blood Bank. Staff adapted quickly to the Echo and solid phase. Diploma in Immuno-Haematology and Blood Transfusion, Diploma in Industrial Health. We do see more warm autos with solid phase, but use tube with PeG, LISS, or saline phase if we have to, to determine presence/absence of underlying alloantibodies. We send out very few specimens to a reference lab and don't resort to tube testing very often for problem solving. Before gel we used manual REACT, but have always used tube for backup and problem solving. ![]() We automated (Echo) for types screens cord blood DATs, weak D, types and antibody IDs about 13 years ago from manual gel. ![]()
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