26 November 2015 (Thursday) - NHSBT Newsletter

The November communication to hospitals from NHS Blood and Transplant came out today

http://hospital.blood.co.uk/

At first sight it seemed rather interesting:

• For Action
  
  1.1  Stock Management of platelets over Christmas and New Year
  1.2  Customer Satisfaction
  1.3  Updated Patient Information Leaflets
  1.4  Points of note from the National Commissioning Group for Blood

• For Information
  2.1 Update on Extended Blood Group Testing for patients with Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Disorders

• For Training
  3.1 Training & Education Events and Courses

It *was*….

20 November 2015 (Friday) - New Guidance

The NICE guidance on blood transfusion came out today:

http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng24

This is the sort of thing that is so easy to overlook; but I really feel this is something that should be read; it is quite amazing how opinion had changed over the years. Consider the new guidance for red cell transfusion:

“consider a threshold of 70 g/litre and a haemoglobin concentration target of 70–90 g/litre after transfusion”.

When I was a lad the limit was 100; not 70. Quite a difference. And that’s just one example…

19 November 2015 (Thursday) - Useful Website

Here’s an interesting article:

http://www.transfusionevidencelibrary.com/

The last article I found on-line was rather depressing; this one’s going to be quite useful for my diploma in biomedical science.

I hope…

19 November 2015 (Thursday) - The Future?

Here’s an interesting article:

http://www.labtestingmatters.org/the-true-cost-of-quality/

Whilst in many ways it doesn’t actually say anything new (and could be construed as little more than a whinge) it is interesting that we seem to be members of a profession which is in a world-wide decline. There seems to be fewer and fewer people coming into this line of work, and precious little being done to halt the decline.

In retrospect I can see where (I thought) the rot set in. I said so at the time and was shouted down in a public meeting by the then President of the IBMS.

Can I do anything about this decline now? I don’t think so. Should I? Definitely… But I’m tired… Realistically if this job can see me to retirement.

Am I wrong to feel this way?

13 November 2015 (Friday) - Malaria - Where?

Something I find I struggle with is remembering which strain of malaria is endemic to which parts of the world. Here’s a website which may well help me out in future:

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/travelers/country_table/a.html

12 November 2015 (Thursday) - Pre Reg Portfolio Reviews

I had an email from the IBMS today. It had feedback following the IBMS Education and Professional Standards Committee meeting.

Interestingly the key point for me was about pre-registration portfolio reviewing:

“blah blah blah…. The above statistics indicate a concern we have that increasing numbers are unable to fulfil the requirements of the verifier and/or examiner role. Over the recent summer in particular we have struggled to allocated verifiers.”

I’m just a little bit peeved by this. I’ve not done a verification for years. Because the IBMS tell me I can’t *until* I’ve undertaken the training that they simply aren’t providing

6 November 2015 (Friday) - Malaria

There used to be a really good on-line malaria atlas based out of an Australian university. I can’t find it, but I did find this link, and following on from it are links to other malaria-related websites.

Mind you they aren’t perfect. Perhaps I might design my own…