Transfusion Medicine Rotation

The resident rotating in Transfusion Medicine will be an integral part of the Blood Bank operations. He /she will have substantial responsibilities for patient care, and usually serve as the primary link between the clinical services and Transfusion Medicine Service. The core rotation consists of four months, with one week spent in the HLA Laboratory and one week in pheresis. 

The residents are to review a number of items (detailed below), present their findings at morning report, perform consultations during the day, and present at the weekly Laboratory Medicine case conference. Additionally, the resident will be required to do bench work laboratory sessions and a number of quality assurance activities. Every weekday of the rotation, the resident will review the following items: 

• Problems from the night call
• Blood component inventory including RBCs, platelets, and plasma products 
• Therapeutic apheresis schedule 
• Laboratory values of patients scheduled for apheresis procedure
• Special requests such as HLA crossmatched platelets. 
• Transfusion reactions
• Special antibody work-ups and ABO discrepancies