In thousands of hospitals across the world,blood transfusion is an every day business,but fraught with risks. This is, not only because contaminated blood may be transfused into an otherwise healthy patient, but also because he may receive the wrong type of blood altogether.
Why have the number of mistakes occurs and worstly increased? This is because many hospitals have cut back staff due to cost pressures. The person who collects blood is not the same person who transfuses it. Typically the patient is not known personally to the nurse who administers the transfusion.The mis-identification can occur due to overwork, carelessness or any other factors.What is important that it does take place.After the event, there is no point in blaming people, processes or institutions because preventing such incidents is to be the main thought.And, due to RFIDtechnology, these errors are actually completely preventable.In a typical hospitals emergency room, the following situation is not unimaginable :
a) There has been an accident and large number of victims have been brought in.
b) Suddenly a large amount of blood is needed for the emergency procedures to be carried out on these patients.
c) The patient himself is either asleep, sedated or otherwise unconscious, unable to talk or communicate with the paramedics.
d) The nurse or paramedic do not know the patient personally.
One sees that the nurse or paramedic can easily pick up the wrong blood bag, get confused because of similar sounding names and hence transfuse the wrong blood.This is in most cases, fatal.