A quick reference guide to starting a Hospital Transfusion Committee
Motivation
- Meet with Head of Surgery, Medicine, Anaesthetics, Haematology, Oncology, Emergency/ICU, O&G, Nursing and Transfusion laboratory to motivate and recruit members.
- Report some examples of difficult cases to your hospital executive to gain their support. Make them aware of risk management issues for the organisation.
- Set a date and have a clear initial agenda
- Deal with a topical issue first
- Some states mandate a Hospital Transfusion Committee (HTC).
Define Role and Terms of Reference Always ask: What do you want to achieve?
Primary role of the HTC is usually to:
- Provide an active forum to facilitate communication between those involved with transfusion
- Recommend or perform practice audits
- Monitor transfusion practice compared to institutional, national or international benchmarks
- Provide education to effect change in practice.
Membership of the HTC
Institutional representatives - Clinicians: Surgery, medicine, paediatrics, haematology, oncology, orthopaedics, O&G, anaesthesia, emergency, ICU.
- Executive management
- Clinical risk management/Quality assurance
- Blood bank scientist in charge
- Nursing
- Other relevant departments e.g. pharmacy.
External representatives
- Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) Transfusion Medicine member
- Invited or ad hoc members
- Health department.
The initial chair is the most motivated member - You! Define ongoing chair at your first meeting.
Activities of the HTC
Goal Setting
- Always have achievable goals
- Break a big problem into smaller components and choose where to start.
Agenda item suggestions
- Reporting and follow up of adverse reactions to transfusion
- Disseminate and implement national policies and guidelines
- Development and review of institutional transfusion policies and systems e.g. patient and sample identification
- Identification of staff training requirements in clinical and laboratory transfusion practice
- Development of local educational and training materials as required
- Collection and monitoring of blood ordering practices, use and wastage statistics, errors and incidents
- A great place to start is a small practice audit OR the implementation of general education which will help raise the profile of the committee while providing an excellent service for the hospital.
Meeting frequency
- Frequent enough to get things done, often quarterly
- Pick the best time to suit the majority of the members.
Other Tips
- Executive commitment and active involvement is important
- Short and informative presentations on topical issues help maintain interest and currency in transfusion practice
- HTC members have their own networks to assist information exchange - use them
- Get secretarial support
- Prompt turnaround of minutes helps motivation of members
- Consider providing food - attendance is always better!
- Enjoy it!
Further Information
If you would like to read more about the subject, "The Transfusion Committee: Putting Patient Safety First." (AABB Press, 2006) edited by Sunita Saxena and Ira Shulman, is an excellent reference.