Improvement in Blood Transfusion Safety: Using Root Cause Analysis

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Objectives: This research aimed at analyzing the adverse events reported related to blood transfusion in one of the large vice-chancellorships of Iran University of Medical Sciences in spring 2018. Methods: This descriptive study was performed based on the eight stages of the root cause analysis (RCA) of healthcare events by the National Authority for Health. For classification of the considered concerns, the “classifying nursing errors in clinical management (NECM)” model, failure classification, approved by the UK National Health System, and also a creative problem-solving technique were used for determining the improvement solutions. Results: Based on the results, 70% of states of blood transfusion error and blood products were placed in the category of care errors, 10% in the communication category, 20% in the category of implementation errors, and 0% in the category of knowledge and skill errors. A total of 38 influencing factors were identified for adverse events of blood transfusion, the most cause of the error was associated with organizational factors (18.4%), and the least reasons for failure were equipment and resource factors (5.3%). Conclusions: The establishment of advanced systems for the automatic transmission of blood and blood products, due to the lack of proper infrastructure in Iran, is not economically feasible. Therefore, at the level of this deputy, the guideline for managing blood transfusion and blood products in the two areas of "measures required before, during, and after blood transfusion and blood products" and "hemovigilance for physicians" were developed.