Requirement to place a blood product in either a plastic storage bag versus a biohazard bag before dispensing to a patient care area
A colleague has asked if anybody is aware of a requirement to place blood products in either a generic plastic storage bag vs. a biohazard bag vs. nothing, before dispensing the product to patient care areas.
The following comments have been received.
- A hospital- based transfusion service technologist in Los Angeles reports that he is unaware of any requirement to place a blood product in either a platic storage bag versus a biohazard bag before dispensing the product to a patient care area. It is the practice at his institution to place a product in a ziploc bag unless it is being issued in a validated transport cooler. The use of a ziploc bag provides some containment if someone were to drop and break the unit container.
ADDENDA Dec. 19, 2010
- A medical technologist at a Los Angeles hospital reports that she is not aware of any regulation that requires the use of either a plastic storage bag or a biohazard bag to dispense a blood product to a patient care area. Her hospital's transfusion service previously supplied such bags at issue of blood products when the used blood bags (opened = potentially infectious) were returned to the blood bank for disposal. When the nursing staff became permitted to dispose of the emptied blood containers in red trash at the site of transfusion, the blood bank stopped giving the over wrap bags out.
ADDENDA Jan. 20, 2011
- The Blood Bank Supervisor of a Children's Hospital near one of the Great Lakes writes that their 2010 JCAHO visit included a verbal discussion that "all blood products not issued in a cooler had to be issued in a plastic bag." The inspector initially wanted them to use a bio-hazard bag. After discussion that patients might feel even more uneasy about a transfusion if it came out of a biohazard bag, "the inspector allowed us to use our clear specimen bags (no seal)". She was, however, also unable to find any regulations dealing with bags.
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