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Quality Controls to Validate Blood Bank Procedures

Blood bank errors can be life-threatening to you or someone you love. When you receive a unit of blood during surgery, or when your newborn baby's blood is typed, you assume that the tech who ran the test was qualified. What you don't think about is the integrity of the materials used in testing, or the storage temperature of the blood until you received it. Quality control in the blood bank is a life-saving measure designed to protect you.

  1. Blood Bank Reagents

    • Blood bank reagents are the testing materials required for the performance of all blood bank tests, from determining your blood type to crossmatching units of blood for your surgery. As part of the daily start-up routine, the blood bank technologist checks each reagent against a known standard to make sure it performs as expected, and examines each reagent to make sure it has not expired and is free from contamination or hemolysis. Unsatisfactory or expired reagents are thrown out.

    Blood Bank Refrigerator

    • The blood bank refrigerator serves as the main storage facility for all refrigerated blood products received in the blood bank, and must be equipped with a recorder for continuous temperature monitoring. If the temperature rises above 6 degrees C or below 1 degree C for more than one half hour, all units of blood in that refrigerator must be quarantined. An audible alarm on the refrigerator will be activated within seconds of a temperature shift, allowing enough time for proper action before stored units reach out-of-range temperatures.

    Calibration of Automatic Cell Washer

    • Automatic cell washers are centrifuges that not only spin the test tubes used for crossmatching blood--and many of the other blood bank procedures--but also add measured amounts of saline to the blood in each tube to wash off unwanted proteins that will interfere in the final stage of the test. These centrifuges are calibrated daily to ensure that each tube will receive the correct volume of saline; otherwise the washing procedure will be incomplete and may give false results.

    Miscellaneous Quality Control

    • Daily temperature logs are kept near each piece of equipment where temperature is a factor, such as an incubator or a waterbath; even room temperature is documented. Centrifuges are calibrated for speed or "RPMs" periodically. Each step and every piece of equipment involved in the storage and processing of blood and blood products in the blood bank is monitored and documented--daily at least; more often as necessary--to ensure your safety.

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