Single person check in blood transfusion

In single person check during blood transfusion, the transfusing nurse is solely responsible should he/she commit errors. Therefore he/she must be extra careful in checking the blood products, checking patients, vital signs monitoring and all other aspects of transfusion. This would certainly minimise errors and near-misses. Any views on this? Thanks in advance. Last edit by uniquenurse on Apr 29, '12
I don't really follow how having only one set of eyes instead of 2 would minimize errors. The reason behind double checks for high risk things like blood and insulin is to minimize errors.

Even with electronic records and scanning, we still have to have two nurses verifying the blood.

The only time I've seen only one person checking blood is during an absolute crisis where we have our massive transfusion going, and we still have two sets of eyes checking that yes, it's O neg blood, not necessarily matching up name which we don't always have or blood band number. And even in the more controlled mtps there are two people checking, especially once we get crossmatched blood.

Is this a thesis statemant or something? Here in the US, single checking blood is not allowed.

needless to say, too many errors had occur in the past with only one staff member, therefore, after typing and crossmatching by the lab. this is done by checking the lot, serial numbers, blood type, and expiration date with another nurse, in order to administer any blood products to minimized errors.

Quote from uniquenurseIn single person check during blood transfusion, the transfusing nurse is solely responsible should he/she commit errors. Therefore he/she must be extra careful in checking the blood products, checking patients, vital signs monitoring and all other aspects of transfusion. This would certainly minimise errors and near-misses. Any views on this? Thanks in advance.

Quote from uniquenurseIn single person check during blood transfusion, the transfusing nurse is solely responsible should he/she commit errors. Therefore he/she must be extra careful in checking the blood products, checking patients, vital signs monitoring and all other aspects of transfusion. This would certainly minimise errors and near-misses. Any views on this? Thanks in advance.

There are redundant fail-safes in place to prevent transfusion errors; the results of which can be catastrophic. Many (if not all) hospitals have initiated not only double checking the transfusion prior to administration but having two RNs draw samples independently and spaced outside a ten minute window. Nurses are often overburdened and some believe these measures are burdensome and unnecessary. There are numerous creative ways nurses have circumvented these rules, inviting disastrous consequences. Double checking is a practice so important it should be embraced and insisted upon rather than debated.

Quote from Esme12Is this a thesis statemant or something? Here in the US, single checking blood is not allowed.

i don't know as there's a law about it or anything, but if you look at the risk/benefit thing and consider why we have a standard of care to do double checks for certain meds/procedures/substances with high risk of complications if we do it wrong, i think you might reconsider your, um, thesis.

Quote from uniquenurseIn single person check during blood transfusion, the transfusing nurse is solely responsible should he/she commit errors. Therefore he/she must be extra careful in checking the blood products, checking patients, vital signs monitoring and all other aspects of transfusion. This would certainly minimise errors and near-misses. Any views on this? Thanks in advance.

Quote from kidsThis reads like a homework question.How about you tell us your views on the statement you provided and we discuss it from there.