Time and Motion Study of Blood Delivery System in a Regional Blood Transfusion Centre in West Bengal: A Pilot Study

Introduction: Delay in turnaround time (TAT) of blood deliveryfor transfusion is an important administrative problem inhospitals. Time and motion study for a definite root causeanalysis (RCA) is valuable to identify the root causes ofproblems in the operating events.Aim: The study was undertaken to observe TAT and thecauses of increased TAT of blood delivery for transfusion to theadmitted patients on an emergency basis at hospital and toformulate plans to rectify them.Materials and Methods: This descriptive longitudinal studywas performed on 50 randomly selected admitted patientsrequiring emergency blood transfusion during a period ofsix months and were not assisted by volunteers. Another 50control patients were incorporated, who were accompaniedby volunteers who assisted them in getting the blood. RCA ofthe delays in TAT was done. Time intervals of TAT in the twogroups were compared by 2 tailed t-tests for equality of means.The data was analysed using Epi-info 7 and SPSS version16. A ‘p-value’ of less than 0.05 was taken to be statisticallysignificant.Results: All the time intervals were high in the study groupin comparison to the control group and in most cases theywere statistically significant (p< 0.05) within a 95% confidenceinterval of the difference. The maximum time needed in bothgroups was in D7 (mean 89.70 and 83.50 minutes in casesand controls respectively) i.e. the interval between the relativereaching regional blood transfusion centre with blood sampleand donor (T7) and patient’s blood sample being processed forgrouping and cross matching (T8).Conclusion: The study revealed that certain easy to implementadministrative steps would help to reduce the TAT significantly