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Ordering of blood by telephone
When ordering blood, it is essential to specifically state how quickly
the blood is needed. Depending on level of urgency, we suggest you use
one of the following requests:
- Emergency Request: Blood is needed immediately.
The blood bank will respond to this request either by providing type-
specific blood which requires an
emergency release or, if the patient
has been found to be antibody screen negative within 72 hours, the
blood bank will provide immediate spin crossmatched blood in 5 - 10
minutes. (The risk of incompatiblity with type-specific blood is
about 3%. With a recipient known to be antibody screen negative, the risk
of incompatibility is about 50 times less, or 0.06%).
- Urgent Request: Blood is needed within 1 - 2 hours.
Work on urgent requests will be started be started by the next
available technologist within 1/2 hour of receipt of request.
- Routine Request: Any request not designated as
Emergency or Urgent is assumed to be routine, and will be
processed in the course of the routine work schedule.
Work requested in this manner will usually take about one
shift to complete.
- Preoperative Blood Ordering: In order to have blood available
for the morning operative schedule, it is essential that the blood bank
receive blood specimens and requisitions by 9:00PM the night before the
surgery. If preoperative orders are changed after 9:00PM, the
house officer must obtain the approval of the attending surgeon and the
director of the blood bank. The blood bank maintains a list of suggested
blood orders for common operations. These guidelines should be followed unless
the clinical situation indicates a modification. The status of blood work
requests may be checked via computer (in the CI system on BICS).
- Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU): Requirements may
be different for ordering, specimens, and collection; consult the
NICU policy manual.
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