Our Nursing team are committed to supporting better healthcare achieving operational excellence & improving customer experience

What is our role?

The Nursing Department in the IBTS is responsible for planning and delivering nursing services within the IBTS to meet the annual donation targets in relation to supply and demand of blood and blood products within our healthcare system and to ensure an efficient and effective service to our donors. 

The team collectively manage national teams to maintain a safe and sustainable blood supply and consist of

• Director of Nursing
• Assistant Director of Nursing
• Practice Development Co-Ordinator
• Clinical Nurse Manager 3’s

Who is on our team?

• These are Nurse-led by a Clinical Nurse Manager (CNM alongside Registered Nurses (RNs) and supported by Donor Attendants, Apheresis Donor Attendants, Registration Clerks & Driver Clerks.
• The role of the RN on clinic is cross functional with an emphasis on ensuring that donors meet the eligibility criteria for donation, thus ensuring a safe blood supply. RNs carry out donation venepuncture and also monitor donors for adverse events associated with donation, and manage these events.  DAs also carry out donation venepuncture under the direction and supervision of the RNs.
• Together with Practice Development (PD) the teams are service and standard driven playing a key role in developing clinical practice based on best international practice
• We promote innovation and advancement of practice and service through our performance development programme across all of our collection teams.
• We work closely with the Donor Medical Consultant to ensure compliance with the EU Directive 2002/98/EC and the Commission Directive 2004/33/EC.
• We collaborate on research  initiatives with internal and external stakeholders contributing to research studies and their processes as well as product and technology development.

What donations do we collect?

IBTS whole blood Clinics

We operate 6 whole blood Mobile Clinics based in Dublin, Cork, Ardee, Carlow, Limerick, Tuam and 4clinics at fixed locations. They are geographically placed to access our nation’s generous donor panel. We run approximately 1200 mobile clinics a year collecting an estimated 128,000 donations of blood annually.Donated blood from our clinics is transported back to the National Blood Centre for processing, testing and for distribution to our hospitals nationwide.

Apheresis Clinics

We operate 2 platelet apheresis donation clinics, one at the National Blood Centre, Dublin and one at the Munster Regional Transfusion Centre, Cork. Our Apheresis Platelets are collected using a different process to Blood donation, using an apheresis machine that separates and removes platelets from other blood components and returning the remaining blood to your body. The IBTS issues approximately 22,000 platelets per year.