BloodTechNet educational resources

Competition year: 2021  
Project title: An interactive virtual tour of blood product manufacturing at Canadian Blood Services  
Principal investigator: Melanie Bodnar, MD, FRCPC  
Target audience: health-care professionals and medical trainees  

The goal of this project was to provide an easy to access, highly visual educational tool to support health-care professionals’ understanding of the step-by-step processes and standards used by Canadian Blood Services. Specifically, this tour follows the journey of a whole blood donation from donor to recipient, through collection, manufacturing, testing, storage, labelling and distribution of blood and blood products. In this self-paced tour, learners can get an overview of the steps by browsing the main tour stops and can also take a deep dive into the world of transfusion by clicking on carefully curated resources. Start your tour on Profedu.ca

Competition year: 2021  
Project title: Transfusion CONsent by a Standardized Evidence-based Novel Tool (Transfusion- CONSENT): Creating and validating novel tools to assess competence in obtaining transfusion consent  
Principal investigator: Marissa Laureano, MD, FRCPC  
Target audience: transfusion prescribers and trainees  

The goal of this project was to support health-care professionals in understanding the basics of informed consent in a transfusion medicine setting through an interactive, self-paced, online course. This course provides training on discussing the risks, benefits, and alternatives of transfusions which will allow health-care professionals to obtain informed consent from their patients. The course is available on Profedu.ca and through hospital and health-care organization learning management systems via DualCode. 

Competition year: 2021 
Project title: Addressing disparities in blood, stem cell and organ and tissue donor pools 
Principal investigator: Warren Fingrut, Stem Cell Club
Target audience: medical trainees

The Stem Cell Club project team developed a workshop for medical students consisting of an online module followed by a facilitated discussion group. The module outlined racial disparities in donor pools across donation products, barriers to donation impacting racialized/ ethnic populations, and donation policies which disproportionately impact racialized communities. The module also highlighted the work of the Black Donors Save Lives campaign as an example of partnering with advocates from diverse communities to address disparities. Participants also reflected on specific actions to help address and overcome these challenges.  

• Learn more about the other videos and social media resources available from the Stem Cell Club project team: Stem Cell Club 

Competition year: 2020 
Project title: Pediatric Transfusion Camp: A needs assessment 
Principal investigator: Dr. Lani Lieberman, University Health Network
Target audience: medical trainees

The main objective of this project led by Dr. Lani Lieberman was to identify the transfusion medicine knowledge topics that a non-transfusion medicine pediatric trainee (e.g., surgical, anesthesia or critical care resident) should know. Leveraging the Transfusion Camp network, a total of 31 core curricular topics and 42 extended topics were finalized based on feedback from experts in transfusion and non-transfusion medicine settings. The resulting publication in Transfusion, the Journal of AABB, serves as a reference guide for topics to include in post-graduate pediatric transfusion medicine education for non-transfusion medicine trainees and is generalizable to all pediatric trainees that order blood. 

Competition year: 2019 
Project title: Blood and stem cell donation for men who have sex with men in Canada: A toolkit or healthcare professionals
Principal investigator: Warren Fingrut, Stem Cell Club
Target audience: healthcare professionals, medical trainees

The Stem Cell Club project team developed a toolkit including an online module and workshop that educates healthcare professionals about blood and stem cell donation in Canada for gay, bisexual and men who have sex with men, starting from historical policies and the context in which they were first implemented until 2022. Additionally, the project team provided training to over 100 medical students at medical schools across Canada. The project team collaborated with advocates, donors, and patients from the 2SLGBTQIA+ community as well as transplant physicians to develop and evaluate an array of multimedia resources to engage 2SLGBTQIA+ peoples in blood and stem cell donation. These resources were shared as part of the Saving Lives with Pride campaign run by Stem Cell Club, receiving significant media attention and winning a number of awards for advancing inclusion for 2SLGBTQIA+ peoples in donation.

Competition year: 2019
Project title: Support of HLA laboratory directors in-training for rotations in specialized laboratories 
Principal investigator: Eric Wagner, Canadian Blood Services
Target audience: HLA laboratory directors in-training, laboratory personnel

Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (HLA) laboratories support transplant activities throughout Canada by assessing patient-donor compatibility and evaluating risk of rejection. The histocompatibility laboratory is central to clinical decision making in organ and stem cell transplantation. Improvement in director in-training and laboratory personnel competency has a direct impact on the quality of laboratory test results and clinical consultation to transplant programs. 

This project allowed three people (directors in-training and other laboratory personnel) to rotate in different laboratories to gain valuable experience and knowledge to be applied for patient care. This training allowed them to: 1) select and interpret histocompatibility tests in the context of thoracic organ transplants and 2) understand the specifics of HLA typing by a state-of-the-art next generation sequencing technology, a technology that revolutionizes the assessment of rejection risk in organ transplantation. This pilot project reached its goals by improving the level of competency of individuals directly involved in the first step of organ allocation and transplantation (i.e., assessment of patient-donor compatibility and assessment of immune risk).  

• Read about these rotations in our R.E.D. blog posts: 
  • BloodTechNet helps lab adopt new technology 
  • BloodTechNet supports transplant and transfusion matchmakers 

Competition year: 2019
Project title: Development of internet modules for serology curriculum delivery
Principal investigator: Matthew Yan, Canadian Blood Services
Target audience: medical trainees, Medical Laboratory Technologists (MLTs)

This team developed six interactive educational modules for learning about immunohematology—all available on LearnSerology.ca. The content, which includes a novel interactive module for completing an antibody investigation panel, was developed for post-graduate medical trainees in clinical hematology and may also be useful for medical laboratory technologists (MLTs).

• Learn more about the modules—why they were developed, how we know they’re effective, and how they are currently being used—in this R.E.D. blog post. 

Competition year: 2018
Project title: Stem cell transplantation multimedia toolkit 
Principal investigator: Warren Fingrut, University of Toronto
Target audience: healthcare professionals

The Stem Cell Transplantation Multimedia Toolkit was developed by the Stem Cell Club to support the education of health-care professionals for the recruitment of stem cell donors. The toolkit includes a whiteboard video series on stem cell donation; a stem cell donation infographic and Why We Swab: a library of stories in stem cell donation.

• Animated whiteboard videos are posted on the Canadian Blood Services Youtube channel and on the stemcellclub.ca website. 

Competition year: 2017
Project title: PID (Primary Immune Deficiency) Toolkit App 
Principal investigator: Susanna Darnel, BC Provincial Blood Coordinating Office (PBCO)
Target audience: healthcare professionals

The Primary Immunodeficiency Disease (PIDD) Toolkit was developed by the BC Provincial Blood Coordinating Office (PBCO) in collaboration with a group of provincial immunologists and transfusion medicine physicians. The toolkit is intended to support the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients with PIDD. The toolkit contains diagnostic and treatment algorithms (presented in two different formats), a dose calculator to determine IVIG or SCIG dose, a dose adjustment calculator, links to the BC provincial IG recommendations as well as other links and references of interest. 

• Access the PIDD Toolkit online.
   

Competition year: 2017 
Project title: An innovative digital strategy for dissemination of Choosing Wisely Canada recommendations in transfusion medicine 
Principal investigator: Dr. Clinton Campbell 
Target audience: healthcare professionals 

This project developed a series of short, entertaining and informative animated videos to inform healthcare professionals of the Choosing Wisely Canada transfusion recommendations and promote safer blood transfusion. View all videos on the Canadian Society for Transfusion Medicine (CSTM) website.  

Competition year: 2016
Project title: Podcast for FNAIT and ICTMG red cell specifications for hemoglobinopathies guidelines
Principal investigator: Dr. Nadine Shehata, St. Michael's Hospital
Target audience: healthcare professionals 

Podcasts were developed by the International Collaboration for Transfusion Medicine Guidelines (ICTMG) to inform physicians about transfusion clinical guidelines. The first podcast discusses red cell specifications for hemoglobinopathies and guides physicians who treat patients with thalassemia and sickle cell anemia in selecting red blood cells. The second podcast is for physicians who treat mothers and babies with Fetal Neonatal Alloimmune Thrombocytopenia (FNAIT) – a potentially life-threatening illness for fetuses and neonates where platelets are destroyed by maternal alloantibodies to human platelet antigens.

• The podcasts and other resources for implementing the clinical guidelines are available at www.ictmg.org.  

Competition year: 2016
Project title: Social media for knowledge translation and education 3 (SoMe-KTE3): Transfusion, thrombosis, and hemostasis
Principal investigator: Dr. Andrew Shih, McMaster University
Target audience: healthcare professionals

The Blood & Clots Series is an online curriculum dedicated to the management of bleeding and thrombosis with transfusion medicine as a central concept. Housed on CanadiEM, this series of online educational resources focuses on some of the most difficult dilemmas we face in medicine today: how to manage patients who are bleeding, clotting, or both. The resources have been designed with ER doctors and front-line/primary care physicians in mind.

The curriculum is based on a needs assessment that was published in the Perspectives on Medical Education journal in 2018 and is written by a team of hematology faculty from across Canada

Competition year: 2016
Project title: The Stem Cell Club: Educating medical and nursing students to develop professional skills 
Principal investigator: Warren Fingrut, University of Toronto
Target audience: medical trainees

This project created a national club that trains medical students on advocating for patients in need of stem cell transplant, securing informed consent, identifying and correcting medical errors and developing leadership and teamwork skills. 

• Read about this BloodTechNet success story

Competition year: 2014
Project title: Better blood transfusion: Neonatal and pediatric patients 
Principal investigator: Clare O'Reilly, BC Children's and Women's Health Centres
Target audience: healthcare professionals

The Transfusion Safety Nurse Clinician at BC Children’s and Women’s hospitals created three e-Learning Transfusion Practice Educational Modules around the following themes: 

1. Administration of blood products: Neonatal – Syringe method; Pediatric – Syringe and volumetric method; Adult – Volumetric method. 

2. Transport of blood products. 

3. Pre-transfusion sample collection. 

To access the modules, go to the Learning Hub site, create an account or sign on as a guest, and search for the modules.
 

Competition year: 2011
Project title: Passing the Serology Torch
Principal investigator:
Target audience: Medical Laboratory Technologists (MLTs) 

This project developed a speaker-series of 11 presentations on serology targeted at transfusion medicine Medical Laboratory Technologists (MLTs). Videos are available in English on the Passing the Serology Torch website.