Haemovigilance

The World Health Organisation defines haemovigilance as a set of surveillance procedures covering the entire blood transfusion chain.

Incident management is integral to haemovigilance, with improved patient safety an increasingly important aspect of statutory requirements and clinical governance.

In Scotland this is underpinned by Serious Hazards of Transfusion (SHOT) reporting and the UK Blood Safety and Quality Regulations.

The MHRA and SHOT (Serious Hazards of Transfusion) have collaborated to improve haemovigilance reporting by producing an integrated single SHOT and MHRA incident reporting process by linking the SABRE and SHOT online reporting systems.

Your Hospital Transfusion Team (HTT) has an important role by managing incidents appropriately to help reduce risks and improve safety.

Taking a consistent approach to incident management and learning lessons when things do go wrong will help you avoid repeat incidents.

Our incident management guidance

We've developed incident management guidance to help improve patient safety by giving you and your team the tools and support you need when managing adverse incidents.

Our guidance will help you understand:

• what should be reported
• how to learn from adverse events and incidents
• how to prevent adverse incidents and minimise the risks associated with transfusion

We also promote a culture of openness and a non-confrontational approach to reporting incidents.

That means the focus of any incident should always be on learning and improvement.