Knowledge and attitude of undergraduates towards blood donation: a cross sectional study of the University of Benin, Benin City

Background: Blood is an essential but scarce therapeutic element. The youth constitute an important age group that can contribute significantly to donor blood availability in health institutions. Their knowledge and attitude towards blood donation may influence their disposition to blood donation practices. Objective: The study seeks to determine the knowledge, attitude and blood donation practices among undergraduate students of the University of Benin. Methodolgy: This is a cross sectional study, conducted at the University of Benin, Benin City. Two hundred pretested questionnaires on knowledge, attitude and practice of blood donation were distributed among consenting undergraduate students across different faculties of the university. Data was analyzed with the statistical package for social science (SPSS IBM) version 20. Result: A total of 155 (79.5%) males and 40 (20.5%) females (M:F of approximately 3.8:1) completed the questionnaires. Their modal age group was 16 ­ 20 years. Sixty eight (34.9%) had good knowledge of blood donation process, 43 (22.1%) had average knowledge and 84 (43.0%) had poor knowledge. Repeat donation rate was 11.3% among the respondent. The practice of blood donation was significantly associated with good knowledge of blood donation process (p = 0.001). Blood donation was higher in those between the age groups of 21 ­ 25 years. Conclusion: Good knowledge of blood transfusion is below average. Blood donation practices is low among undergraduate students of the University of Benin and there is high disposition to family replacement donation

Turnaround time for electrolytes, urea, and creatinine in a clinical laboratory

Background: Timeliness is expressed as the turnaround time and is often used by the clinician as a benchmark for laboratory performance.Clinicians depend on fast turnaround time to achieve early diagnosis and treatment of their patients and early patient discharge from departments or hospital in-patient services. Determination of the turnaround time would enable a critical self- appraisal of our laboratory services and improve our turnaround time. Objective: This study assessed the turnaround time for electrolytes, urea and creatinine tests from the emergency departments of the hospital. Materials and Methods: An observational study was conducted between September and October 2016 amongst patients from the Intensive Care Unit, Accident and Emergency Department and Children Emergency Room, whose blood specimens were received at the Chemical Pathology Department foremergencyelectrolytes, urea and creatinine tests. A total of 122 specimens were randomly selected and the average time taken to complete each phase was measuredand the overall turnaround time calculated. Data was analysed using statistics software SPSS (version 13.5). Results: Audited cases consisted of 20 (16.4%) specimens from the Intensive Care Unit, 40 (32.8%) from the Children Emergency Room and 62 (50.8%) from the Accident and Emergency Department. The average turnaround time for the Accident and Emergency Department, Intensive Care Unit, and Children Emergency room were 6.5hours, 4.2hours and 5.2hours respectively. Conclusion: This study revealed that the turnaround time for electrolytes, urea and creatinine for patients in the emergency units is quite long and requires some improvement which could be done with the use of Laboratory Information System to track specimens from the various emergency units of the hospital