Audits of each step in the transfusion process are critical to ensuring patient safety. This guide helps facilities establish a quality assessment program.

For many years, quality improvement and quality assurance activities for assessment of transfusion safety have focused on blood component collection, processing and compatibility testing. That emphasis has shifted to the entire transfusion process, including component administration, incident reporting, blood utilization review and transfusion safety personnel. Guidelines for the Quality Assessment of Transfusion offers insight into the rationale for establishing a thorough assessment program of the entire transfusion process in order to maximize patient safety.

By Jeffrey Wagner, BSN, RN; James P. AuBuchon, MD; Sunita Saxena, MD; and Ira A. Shulman, MD, for the Clinical Transfusion Medicine Committee

(AABB, 2006, soft cover, 38 pages, ISBN 978-1-56395-353-8)