Knowing and Use Situations of Hemovigilance System in the Scope of Blood Transfusion Safety of Nurses: Rural Example

Objective: This study was carried out to determine the nurses' knowledge of the hemovigilance system and their use of it, within the scope of blood transfusion safety. Methods: The sample of this descriptive and cross-sectional study consisted of all nurses (n=65) working at Gumushane State Hospital. The data were collected with Structured Question Form Number, percentage, mean, Continuity Correction, Pearson Chi-Square and Fisher Exact tests were used to evaluate the data. Results: Of the nurses, 90.8% were women, the average age was 27.01 +/- 5.16 (20-48) years and 86.1% had undergraduate or higher education. Of the nurses, 84.6% knew that they were supervised by a hemovigilance nurse. Nurses (43.1%) who received training on the hemovigilance system had higher levels of knowing that each unit of blood taken from the donor follows the final destination (100.0%) than the nurses who did not receive training (p <0.05). The nurses who knew that they were supervised during transfusion related processes performed the following steps at a higher rate than those who did not know that they were inspected (p <0.05): Wearing gloves before the application (100.0%), using appropriate branches in children (87.3%), obtaining written consent before blood transfusion (100.0%), and completing the blood transfusion within a maximum of four hours (87.3%) were higher than nurses who did not know that they were supervised (p <0.05). Also; the majority of nurses (90.8%) were determined to use the current procedures for blood transfusions. Conclusion: In line with the findings of the study, it was stated that the nurses who were educated about the hemovigilance system and who knew that they were supervised by the hemovigilance nurse, had high hemovigilance system usage.