Reactive donor notification: First error reported

Donor notification and post-donation counseling is an essential role of blood bank. If a donor is reactive for any marker, the blood bank counselor, informs the donor and advices him/her to report to the blood bank for further counseling and management. The counselor at our blood bank informed a young female voluntary donor to be reactive for HIV both with ELISA as well as NAT. When the donor reported to blood bank, the repeat testing was negative and no history of high risk behavior could be elicited. The hospital information system (HIS) records were checked again immediately for clarification and showed consistency with her demographic profile. But when her manual records and donor questionnaire were retrieved, showed information displayed in the HIS system was wrongly interpreted by the counselor. In this era of information technology being highly advanced, the role of manual record keeping is still the gold standard.