Stop the Blood Waste in CITU - Blood is Precious
The aim of this project is to reduce blood wastage in post cardiac patients admitted to CTICU from 100% to 50% by the end of October 2017 and to zero percentage by end of February 2018, hereby reducing the additional risk of anemia.
Currently in Heart Hospital-CTICU, we observed that an open system is used in all patients to obtain blood samples and 10 ml of a patient’s blood is discarded from the sample taken. This practice puts a greater burden on post cardiac surgery patients as they have already loss their RBC’s from mediastinal bleeding.
As a result of this problem, we have responded by initiating this project of laboratory blood sampling by applying a closed blood sampling system instead of the current open blood sampling which will reduce blood waste or “discard blood volume” during diagnostic phlebotomy.
The expected improvement in the quality system in Heart Hospital-CTICU is 100 % usage of the closed blood sampling by the nurses and thereby promoting patient safety as shown in the 0% blood waste reduction in post cardiac surgery patients.