Standardization of Blood Product Orders Improves Patient Safety in Pediatric Transfusion Medicine: A Collaborative Project Open Access

Complexity of ordering and transfusing blood is particularly evident in the pediatric population. Simplification, clarification, and standardization of blood orders can decrease complexity and improve patient safety.

To improve patient safety by optimizing electronic ordering of blood components in pediatrics through a collaborative process improvement initiative.

A multidisciplinary working group, formed as part of a value stream analysis to improve transfusion safety at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (Atlanta, Georgia), focused on decreasing variability and providing clarity when ordering, preparing, and transfusing blood using the electronic health record. Through benchmarking with other pediatric institutions and a collaborative design process with multiple local stakeholders, an extensive redesign in the existing orders and order sets occurred. Metrics were collected to determine if a change was an improvement.

Nurse and laboratory informaticists, a pathology informaticist, and a transfusion medicine specialist built the new orders based on the design. The new orders focused on the following changes: standardization, introduction of logic, naming conventions, clarifying definitions, adding calculations, improving transparency of history and laboratory data, removing aliquots, clarifying communication, and implementing additional modules to inform the provider of necessary information about the patient. Metrics included a decrease in the number of orders changed within an hour, decreased calls from the blood bank to the provider to clarify the order, and an absence of overtransfusions and transfusion-related serious safety events for a year following implementation.

This collaborative initiative, using standard process improvement tools, resulted in standardized blood orders improving transfusion safety.