Blood Matters Program

About Blood Matters

Page contents: History of Blood Matters | Transfusion Nurse/Trainer | Advisory Committee | Key result areas 2012 -2014

History of Blood Matters

The Blood Matters project began in April 2002 with the formation of a consortium of three organisations. This consortium developed and tested tools and processes to improve transfusion practice in hospitals. The Blood Matters project was expanded in 2003 to include an additional 12 public hospitals in a Blood Matters Breakthrough Collaborative project, a project methodology developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in the United States. These hospitals further tested and developed transfusion interventions over an 18 month period.

The interventions included:

• Seek to improve clinician and patient awareness and knowledge of blood product use,
• Improve clinical decision making, and
• Enhance the blood administration process by making all successful practical strategies for improvement available to other hospitals in Victoria and Tasmania.

As part of the Blood Matters project, the transfusion nurse role was installed into hospitals. To support those in the role, a Certificate in Transfusion course was developed as part of the Blood Matters Consortium project.

Transfusion Nurse/Trainer

The Blood Matters project involved the Transfusion Nurse as a key contact and coordinator for all health services involved. The ongoing development of the Transfusion Nurse/Trainer role is of key importance to the Blood Matters program. There are currently 17 Transfusion Nurse and 25 Transfusion Trainer positions funded on Victoria.

Advisory Committee

Structure

The advisory committee provides an opportunity for engagement and collaboration between members of the health sector and the Blood Matters program to promote a multidisciplinary, multimodal program based approach to Patient Blood Management.

For further information regarding membership of the Blood Matters Advisory Committee please contact bloodmatters@health.vic.gov.au.

Key result areas 2012 -2014

The three key result areas include:

Key result area 1 – Patient Blood Management (PBM)

The aim is to promote and support best practice for patient blood management, and access to product, including strategies that optimise  blood product use directed at clinical governance frameworks and standards related to blood product use.

Key result area 2 – Serious Transfusion Incident Reporting (STIR)

The aims are to derive recommendation from the monitoring of serious transfusion errors, sentinel events, adverse events and near misses during blood and blood product utilisation and to disseminate these to hospitals and health services.

Key result area 3 – Communications

The aim is to share knowledge and promote collaboration with relevant stakeholder groups locally, nationally and internationally.