4th Oct - 8th Oct

This week was spent working on re-writing the 'Procedure with Incompatible Crossmatch' SOP. Almost there!

I also managed to get an audit done. I did a comparative audit between the result interpretations that we submitted with our NEQAS Haematinics results and the consensus results. The results suggested that a revision of the normal range in use for Folates should be considered. Hope to get some feedback.

Placed an order for some neonatal group A- platelets from our NHSBT centre. We were called to say that no group A neonatal platelets were avaliable, would group O be OK? Intitially I agreed to the group O platelets but felt uneasy at doing so and therefore sort advice from a more senior collegue. He called the blood centre and asked if they could check whether group A neonatal platelets were avaliable at the next closest blood centre, there was a unit of A+ neonatal platelets which we requested. My senior advised me to write to our local blood centre to ask why the stock at the next nearest blood centre was not checked before we were contacted to say no group A units were avaliable. I await a response.

Our TP finished off a new prophylactic anti-D request and combined traceability form that myself and a collegue helped her to design. This is in response to a couple of recent incidents where the layout of the anti-D request form was a contributary factor to (i) the incorrect dose of anti-D being issued and (ii) anti-D not being issued for the patient's appoinment resulting in an appoinment reshedule. We were also not conforming to traceibilty protocols for anti-D being sent to satelitte antenatal clinics, we therefore chose to combine the redesign of the request form with a new traceability form. It needs to go for consultation but hopefully will be in use in the not too distant future.