Risk management in a blood center: A step towards risk reduction

Given the central role of blood bank in patient care, any risks within involving blood bank can have serious implications, potentially affecting patient outcomes. A systematic approach is presently lacking in risk management of blood centers. Therefore, it is of interest to apply techniques to implement effective risk management strategies in a blood bank, with the goal of minimizing its occurrence and enhancing overall safe transfusion. The probability of each risk event was rated on a five-point Likert scale: Very Low (1), Low (2), Moderate (3), High (4) and Very High (5). The severity of potential outcomes was similarly rated: Negligible (1), Minor (2), Moderate (3), Severe (4) and Catastrophic (5). These scores were used to calculate the unweighted Risk Priority Number (RPN) for each risk and risks with higher RPNs were prioritized for mitigation efforts. The top 10 risk with highest RPN seen in our study were: donor send without proper counselling, blood request form not filled properly, misbehaviour by attendants, wrong blood group on blood bag, wrong labelling of blood bag/sample, request from professional donor, blood bag labelling mistake, donor standing quickly after blood donation, RBC contamination in platelets preparation, sample insufficient for analysis.