Haemovigilance
What is haemovigilance?
Haemovigilance is a set of surveillance procedures covering the whole transfusion chain (from the collection of blood and its components to the follow-up of recipients), intended to collect and assess information or unexpected or undesirable effects resulting from the therapeutic use of blood products, and to prevent their occurrence or recurrence.
Queensland's approach to haemovigilance
Under National Safety and Quality Health Service Standard 7 - Blood and Blood Products (Standard 7), health service organisations are required to ensure that blood and blood product adverse events are included in the incidents management and investigation system including by:
- having blood and blood product incidents reported to and reviewed by the highest level of governance in the health service organisation, and
- participating in haemovigilance activities conducted by the organisation or at state or national levels
Local haemovigilance activities may include:
- Completing the electronic haemovigilance form in response to blood related incidents reported in local incident monitoring systems
- reviewing and validating the haemovigilance data in the form
- exporting the haemovigilance data from the form into a master spreadsheet for local record keeping and reporting purposes
- providing de-identified haemovigilance data for national haemovigilance reports
The Department of Health’s role in haemovigilance is to:
- facilitate the availability of a tool for the consistent collection of haemovigilance data
- develop and maintain a guideline on haemovigilance data collection, validation and analysis
- coordinate data provision from HHSs and licensed private health facilities to the National Blood Authority for national haemovigilance reporting.
Recommended actions for Queensland hospitals and health facilities
It is recommended that hospitals and health facilities:
- consider and follow the guideline on haemovigilance data collection, validation and reporting
- use the electronic haemovigilance form to collect data on the adverse event. The forms are available from blood@health.qld.gov.au
- seek independent validation of the reported event information
- use the available Haemovigilance Coordinator Master Record to import the data from the electronic form, once the information has been validated. This process is generally managed by the hospital transfusion nurse/haemovigilance coordinator/quality officer. The Master Record is available by email at blood@health.qld.gov.au.
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when requested, provide the de-identified data in the spreadsheet to the Department of Health for inclusion in national reporting.