Important changes to blood collection at Sandwell

January 20, 2022

Porters will be starting to collect blood components for clinical areas at Sandwell. The changes have started to be rolled out gradually by clinical area, with a planned trial which has already commenced on AMU A.

The transfusion practitioners will support both the portering team and the clinical areas during this transition.

We need to emphasise that clinical areas must not request porters to collect blood until their agreed change date. This is because it will cause potential delays as the porters have been instructed not to collect from a clinical area unless informed to do so by the transfusion practitioners.

The transfusion practitioners will be available to assist the clinical areas in the use of CapMan to request blood components, along with a Quick Reference Guide, posters and other resources that are available on the blood transfusion section on Connect. There is also a video for staff to watch in the Unity e-learning module.

Once a clinical area goes live with requesting porters to collect blood components, team members already trained in blood collection will have their barcodes disabled and they will no longer be able to access the blood issue fridge.

Clinical colleagues will still be required to collect albumin and anti D from the blood transfusion laboratory (blood bank).

If emergency O negative blood is required for a patient, a member of the clinical team will be required to go to the blood transfusion laboratory (blood bank) and the lab team will issue the blood directly.

For more information please email swbh.bloodtransfusion@nhs.net.