Get Ready for BABA!!! Upcoming Provincial Bedside Audit of Blood Administration (BABA)

Tracy Cameron, MLT, Regional Manager, ORBCoN NE

Transfusion of blood is a frequently ordered treatment; across Ontario hospitals, every day in FY 2021/22, approximately 950 red blood cell units were transfused. ¹ To deliver safe transfusion patient care, evidence-based, best practice hospital policies and procedures are developed. Audits: assessment of practice, is a valuable patient safety indicator and provides opportunity for ongoing learning to enhance transfusion safety. ² Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network (ORBCoN)’ s audit tool is based on Health Canada and Transfusion Medicine (TM) Standards which provide rationale for policies and procedures.

ORBCoN’s will be conducting a 2023 Provincial Bedside Audit of Blood Administration (BABA) that will commence on Monday January 30th, 2023, and end on Friday March 31st, 2023. All hospitals in Ontario will be invited to participate, and a communication will be sent out in early January.
The Provincial Bedside Audit of Blood Administration audit is a key activity of the provincial blood utilization strategy. Data from this audit may be compared with previous audits held in 2011 and 2018.

Similar to the previous provincial audits, a paper audit form will be provided to perform the audit at the bedside and an online audit tool to facilitate the data entry of the audit results. Hospitals will be able to review their own data, while the provincial data will be summarized and shared in a ORBCoN report. In the previous provincial audit, most Research Ethics Board (REB) committees considered this type of audit to be a quality improvement initiative and not requiring full ethics review. Be sure to check with your REB committee if you have concerns.

The audit form has been revised as per current TM standards and the online tool has been rebuilt using REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) a secure, web-based software platform designed for building and managing online databases and surveys ³. This REDCap tool has been customized for the BABA.

The goal of this audit is to collect data and compare results to previous audits to see if improvements have been made in ensuring compliance with current TM Standards ^4,5,6 . The critical steps in the blood component administration process, specifically identification of the recipient, identification of the component, compatibility of the blood components, patient monitoring before, during and after transfusion and documentation are emphasized.
The number of audits to be performed will be based on your hospital’s classification.

Hospital Classification	Number of transfusion procedures/duration
Small Community (<100 beds)	2 transfusion procedures or 3 months
Medium to Large Community (>100 beds)	5 transfusion procedures or 3 months
Large/Teaching (university affiliated)	10 transfusion procedures or 3 months

The invitation to participate will be sent to primary lab and medical contacts, as well as nursing coordinators, transfusion safety officers and ONTraC contacts. Stay tuned to your emails, and our social media for more announcements.

1 Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network (ORBCoN). Blood Utilization Graphs [Internet]. Toronto (CA); ORBCoN: 2022 Aug [cited 2022 Aug 16]. Available from: https://transfusionontario.org/category/blood-utilization-audits/blood-utilization-graphs/
2 Irina Maramica, Ira A. Shulman. Approaches to Blood Utilization Auditing in Technical Manual 19th edition, AABB Press, Bethesda MD; 2017:557-566
3 PA Harris, R Taylor, R Thielke, J Payne, N Gonzalez, JG. Conde, Research electronic data capture (REDCap) – A metadata-driven methodology and workflow process for providing translational research informatics support, J Biomed Inform. 2009 Apr;42(2):377-81.
4 National Standard of Canada Canadian Standards Association (CA) Blood and blood components. Toronto ON; 2020 Mar 24; cited 2022 Dec 14. 162 p. Report No.: CAN/CSA-902:20.
Available from: https://community.csagroup.org/docs/DOC-126295
5 Canadian Society for Transfusion Medicine (CA) Standards for hospital transfusion services. Markham ON; 2021 Dec; cited 2022 Jun 14. 110 p. Report No.: Version 5.
Available from: http://www.transfusion.ca/Resources/Standards
6 Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network. Bloody easy blood administration. version 3. Toronto: Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network; 2020 [cited 2022 Jun 14]. 146p.
Available from: https://transfusionontario.org/category/bloody-easy-e-tools-publications/bloody-easy-blood-administration/

From ORBCoN Crew

TM New Year’s Resolution

A New Year is upon us and with the New Year comes time for new beginnings. New beginnings bring to mind resolutions and TM departments are always striving to improve their services which is what resolutions are all about!
ORBCoN would like to suggest some New Year’s resolutions for your TM department. These are based on the top Accreditation Canada Diagnostic non-conformances that were noticed from the previous year

This year Transfusion Medicine resolves to:
WANT: Have a training program and competency assessment process that is evaluated for its effectiveness for all personnel involved in the administration of blood products including physicians, nurses, and laboratory personnel, that will consider the complexity of tasks and potential for error.
NEED: Equipment that have the capacity to monitor the temperature range of the contents, can be set at the acceptable temperature range for the products stored inside and have an audible alarm when temperatures go beyond the acceptable range.
SHARE: Procedures for the return of products from a clinical area that take into consideration all possible products that can be issued, not only red blood cell units.
SUCCEED: Establish a comprehensive home infusion process that includes all necessary elements such as identification of person picking-up the product, redistribution of products near expiry, safety precautions, sources of variability, and follow up for transfusion complications.

Newsboard

Tech Assessment

The Bloody Easy Technologist Assessment program is now available on the new ORBCoN Learning Management System (LMS) and Surge Learning platforms.
A communication has been issued with instructions to provide site administrator information for access to the ORBCoN LMS and guidance for current Surge Learning clients.
If you have any questions or have not received the communication please reach out to alison.wendt@sunnybrook.ca