[Identity vigilance and implementation of transfusion software in hospitals]. / Identitovigilance et intégration de l'informatique transfusionnelle dans les établissements de santé.

In hospitals, patients' identity mismatch is the cause of serious incidents during transfusion or other healthcare processes. With a wider use of healthcare software, new dysfunctions and risks may occur in case of ID mismatch between different software and for transfusion between blood bank and hospital. Four critical stages are to be considered when using software management of hospital care: initial patients' identification, modifications of identification data during hospital stay and then synchronization of all different software, proper use of patient's identification means by hospital staff and share of patient's identification data with others such as the Etablissement français du sang (EFS) for transfusional purposes. Perpignan Hospital has put in place an identity vigilance group whose role is to enforce a safe patients' identification policy. It has to inform and train hospital staff, make sure that all software requiring patients' ID are correctly synchronized, especially when sharing data with EFS and monitor improvement with a surveillance system. As transfusion care is one of the more patients' ID sensitive, particularly when computer assisted, haemovigilance officers are highly involved in identity vigilance.

[Validity of pretransfusion bedside agglutination tests for pretransfusional control]. / Etude régionale de validité, dans les services de soins, du test d'agglutination du contrôle ultime prétransfusionnel.

The incidence rate of ABO hazards of transfusion remains high in France. In this country, bedside pretransfusion controls include an agglutination test for red cells only, although its validity has scarcely been assessed in the practice. 847 nurses from 9 public hospitals and private clinics in a French region participated in a study aimed at measuring the sensitivity and specificity of pretransfusion bedside agglutination tests within hospital wards. Sensitivity was found to be 93.9% +/- 3%. Nondetection of mismatching was increased by two risk factors only: having worked more than 4 years in the same ward, and not having been trained to use this test. The sensitivity of this test might still be improved. This test is found sensitive enough to be kept. Nevertheless, if used alone, it is not a safe protection against recipient's mismatch. Authors recommend both to improve agglutination test sensitivity and to link it strongly to the bedside checking of both transfusion information and the recipient's identity.