Serious Hazards of Transfusion (SHOT) Annual Report 2006
Abstract
The year’s key recommendations focus on the need for integration of transfusion medicine into the teaching and training curricula for junior hospital doctors, and nursing and scientific staff involved in transfusion. This goes beyond assessment of basic competencies and is recognising the need for solid knowledge and understanding of transfusion therapies so that sound decisions can be made in clinical practice. As previously, these recommendations have been made after consultation with stakeholders to ensure support for their implementation. The final responsibility for ensuring action in relation to hospital-based recommendations lies with Trust Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), though the day-to-day responsibility may be delegated to members of the Hospital Transfusion Team (HTT). The recommendations this year appear in three sections of the full SHOT report: SHOT Recommendations of the Year, Active recommendations from previous years: update, Specific recommendations relevant to each reporting category.Collections
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Annual SHOT Report 2020Key SHOT messages • Ensuring transfusion teams are well resourced: Clinical and laboratory teams can function optimally only if adequately staffed and well resourced. Healthcare leaders and management must ensure that staff have access to the correct information technology (IT) equipment and financial resources for safe and effective functioning • Addressing knowledge gaps, cognitive biases, and holistic training: Transfusion training with a thorough and relevant knowledge base in transfusion to all clinical and laboratory staff along with training in patient safety principles, understanding human factors and quality improvement approaches are essential. It is important that staff understand how cognitive biases contribute to poor decision making so that they can be mitigated appropriately • Patient safety culture: Fostering a strong and effective safety culture that is ‘just and learning’ is vital to ensure reduction in transfusion incidents and errors, thus directly improving patient safety • Standard operating procedures (SOP): SOP need to be simple, clear, easy to follow and explain the rationale for each step. This will then ensure staff are engaged and more likely to be compliant and follow the SOP • Learning from near misses: Reporting and investigating near misses helps identify and control risks before actual harm results, thus providing valuable opportunities to improve transfusion safety • Learning from the pandemic: The learning from the pandemic experiences should be captured in every organisation, by everyone in healthcare and used to improve patient safety
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Annual SHOT Report 2016ABO-incompatible transfusions are the tip of the iceberg; they most commonly result from failure to identify the patient at the time of blood sampling (wrong blood in tube) or administration to the wrong patient. Pulmonary complications, particularly transfusion-associated circulatory overload (TACO), cause the most deaths and major morbidity. Delayed transfusions are an important cause of death, 25/115 (21.7%) 2010 to 2016. Many errors in transfusion, some with serious clinical consequences, relate to poor communication between teams, shifts and interfaces. The infrastructure needs improvement to facilitate exchange of results within and between hospitals. IT errors contributed to 1 in 5 SAE reported. IT is not infallible, it makes transfusion practice safer by helping to control and support the task, but does not replace knowledge about the task.
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Annual SHOT Report 2019Accurate patient identification is fundamental to patient safety. Organisations must review all patient identification errors and address the causes of patient misidentification with use of electronic systems, and empowerment of patients and staff. Clinical and laboratory staff should be trained in fundamentals of transfusion, human factors, cognitive biases, investigating incidents and patient safety principles. All healthcare organisations should incorporate the principles of both Safety-I and Safety-II approaches to improve patient care and safety. Healthcare leaders should proactively seek signals for improvement from unsafe, suboptimal as well as excellent care. Healthcare management must recognise that safety and outcomes are multifaceted, a linear view of safety does not fully acknowledge the interdependencies of resources including their leadership, adequate staffing and knowledge. Healthcare leaders should ensure these are all in place to improve patient safety.
