Question

Give one article regarding blood transfusion errors and discuss which process was not taken and what actions (policies and or procedure) were taken by the organization to prevent another occurence.

Answer 1

Blood transfusion refers to a medical procedure of transfusing blood and blood products to the recipient from a donor . The blood is transfused intravenously. Normally red blood cells, platelets,plasma and clotting factors are transfused during blood transfusion. The blood transfusion indicated for patients with iron deficiency anemia,sickle cell crisis, platelet deficiency, kidney disease resulting in anemia, anemia secondary to cancer.

Blood transfusion procedure is to save lives but improper techniques will leads to life threatening incidents. The most common error is incorrect blood given to the right patient. This results from error in crossmatch labelling, patient name wrongly entered in the blood bank requisition, nurses negligence in checking the blood product before transfusion. The other errors are transfusing infected blood that leads to serious blood borne infections like hepatitis, HIV.

Infusion of wrong blood products to a patient leads to acute hemolytic transfusion reaction. The patient own body starts destructing its own red blood cells and blod clots rapidly this occludes vital organs resulting in stroke.

The errors in blood transfusion can control by initiating proper training to nurses and blood bank personnels. Proper labelling of samples must done and patient identification markers can be verified twice to ensure correct patient and correct blood products. It is essential to monitor patient at first 15 minutes to identify early transfusion reactions thereby preventing life threatening complications.