ABSTRACT
Additional safety measures, such as the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), becomes a vital part of ensuring the protection of health care workers. [...]innovative strategies to conserve PPE have emerged in response to shortages faced by hospitals. While this strategy has helped reduce the number of "unnecessary" bedside visits requiring PPE, additionally moving blood infusion pumps outside the immediate patient care environment could be advantageous by further reducing both the amount of PPE used when administering these products and the infectious risk to workers. Guidelines for typical transfusions indicate that the transfusionist be at the bedside to monitor the patient's condition and check vital signs prior to and during administration, and after completion of the transfusion, as well as to adjust infusion pump parameters after the first 15 minutes and, as necessary, throughout the transfusion. [...]a minimum of four bedside visits per transfusion are required;however, critical care patients often require delivery of multiple infusions (including IV fluids, medications and multiple blood products), which increase the number of entries to patient rooms. RBC hemolysis and extracellular potassium were tested, as previously described, on samples collected from each flow rate and from the original RCC (no treatment control) which was not exposed to the tubing (flow rate "C" in Figure l).4,5 The three citrate phosphate dextrose (CPD) anticoagulated leukocyte reduced RCCs stored in saline-adenine-glucose-mannitol (SAGM) additive solution used in this study were obtained from Canadian Blood Services (CBS) Edmonton Centre and were produced using the red cell filtration (leukoreduction) method as previously described.4 RCCs were tested close to expiry (day 37 post collection), at which point they are likely more susceptible to shear stress due to the RBC storage lesion.