Consent for albumin?

[bill4745, RN]

An agency nurse in our ER wanted the doc to get a Blood Products Permission slip signed by a patient. Her reasoning was that albumin is a blood product. Anyone heard of this?

[Reno1978, BSN, RN]

Looking at http://www.albumintherapy.com/us/en/ask.html#6 it does indeed seem that it is derived from plasma donations. However, I've never seen a consent required for it either. I could see how patients who refuse blood products for religious/cultural reasons may object to receiving this if they knew what it was derived from.

[elizabells, BSN, RN]

I've never seen it, but we usually only give it to pts on ECMO or post-bypass, so they've already signed a blood consent at that point. I've wondered too - we don't give it through a separate line like a blood product.

[cardiacRN2006, ADN, RN]

Nope, never seen that. We give it without consent, but it comes with its own special tubing that we change with each bottle...

[suanna]

I have never seen a premission slip for albumin but I do know the local Kingdom Hall has ruled that it is blood per-se and cannot be given under thier beliefs.

[utahliz]

We treat albumin as a medication, not a blood product, though we get it from the blood bank. We never require signed consent, though if I had a Jehovah's Witness pt. I would ask them what their wishes were. Though albumin is derived from blood, it does not need to by typed or cross-matched. We give a lot of albumin to pts. who are low or need it as a volume expander.

[Mulan]

I've always given it as a medication too, it is scheduled on the MAR. Monitoring was not done. It came from pharmacy where I worked, in a glass bottle that came from the manufacturer. It did come with it's own tubing which of course wouldn't work in a pump.

[TulsaTime]

An agency nurse in our ER wanted the doc to get a Blood Products Permission slip signed by a patient. Her reasoning was that albumin is a blood product. Anyone heard of this?

Yep. Albumin is a blood product & by following the policy correctly it does require a consent just like any other blood product. Only a few of the hospitals i've worked in have followed this but considering it is a blood product I think it's a smart thing to do.

[meandragonbrett]

No, no consent needed.

[cardiacRN2006, ADN, RN]

It came from pharmacy where I worked, in a glass bottle that came from the manufacturer. It did come with it's own tubing which of course wouldn't work in a pump.

When we are giving it as a gtt and not a bolus, we can still use the tubing on a pump. We just hang it as a PB with a NS driver.

[elizabells, BSN, RN]

When we are giving it as a gtt and not a bolus, we can still use the tubing on a pump. We just hang it as a PB with a NS driver.

I should have mentioned that since I'm in a NICU, we never use the entire bottle, and draw it up in a syringe and give it over time on a pump, even if it is a bolus. Can't go too fast through a 1Fr PICC! The fastest I've managed to do it is 20min.

[mnurse3139]

Well I have worked for two hospitals in south Texas within the same system, one required it one did not. Once we were giving albumin to a jehovah witness and I was wondering if they knew where it came from.