Regional
Professional education resources at Canadian Blood Services support best practices in transfusion medicine
Melanie Bodnar
Canadian Blood Services, Edmonton, Canada
Sophie Chargé
Canadian Blood Services, Ottawa, Canada
Kaylee C. L. Brooks
Canadian Blood Services, Ottawa, Canada
Blood bags hanging from racks, tubing dangling like spaghetti while gravity and filters patiently work to rid red cells of troublesome leukocytes; this is an image many will remember after visiting a blood manufacturing facility like those managed by Canadian Blood Services.
Figure 1. Leukoreduction filter for red blood cells
While the manufacturing of blood components still involves basic technology, like gravity and filters, processes are continually evolving to enhance safety and efficacy. Over the last 25 years, Canadian Blood Services has transitioned to the buffy coat method of component manufacturing, implemented pathogen reduction technology for platelets and plasma, and is reintroducing whole blood units for specific clinical settings. Donor testing has introduced nucleic acid testing for pathogens, the use of high throughput automation, and the expansion of red cell antigen genotyping. Things change in the transfusion world and frontline professionals must continuously adapt their practices.
How can transfusion professionals keep up to date with these changes? To assist with this, Canadian Blood Services collaborates with partners from across Canada using a multipronged approach to develop knowledge mobilization and educational resources. A key element of this approach is a website dedicated to professional education, Profedu.ca. First launched in the early 2000s as the brainchild of former Canadian Blood Services medical director Heather Hume, the site has since seen many iterations. With more than 65 pages of carefully curated and regularly updated content, the site is now the responsibility of a dedicated knowledge mobilization team. Working closely with subject matter experts, the team designs resources that meet educational needs and support the implementation of best practices in transfusion medicine across Canada. Over the last 20 years, the site’s popularity has grown from 1,000 unique views per month to 1,700 unique views per day from around the world!
The Canadian Blood Services Clinical Guide to Transfusion, a long-standing Profedu.ca resource, consists of twenty chapters available in English and French. It was first published in 1993 as a paper booklet distributed to blood banks across Canada and has since evolved into an entirely digital resource. The Guide saw some of the most prestigious Canadian transfusion medicine experts serve as editors including Anita Ali, Morris Blajchman and Gwen Clarke. Under the current stewardship of Aditi Khandelwal, a Canadian Blood Services medical officer, the Guide continues to engage a Canada-wide network of subject matter experts as authors and reviewers, with close to 300,000 views annually. In addition to Canadians, individuals from the United States, France, Algeria and India are among the top users accessing the Guide.
Canadian Blood Services also supports national training initiatives in transfusion education by leveraging the expertise of many of these subject matter experts and the Profedu.ca website’s content hosting capabilities. Over the last 10 years, the education program known as Transfusion Camp has increased transfusion knowledge and best practices by providing high-quality and relevant transfusion medicine training to Canadian postgraduate medical residents in various specialties. It has been recognized as a novel and scalable approach to delivering effective transfusion education. The program began in 2012 at the University of Toronto as a local initiative under the leadership of Jeannie Callum and Yulia Lin; it’s now offered at all 17 Canadian medical schools with more than 300 residents attending lectures and participating in team-based learning seminars annually. The success of this program derives from its ability to bring together over 100 Canadian experts from various specialties and career stages, to develop the curriculum and deliver the training. The program has also been adapted for nurse practitioners and benefits international communities through targeted collaborations.
To further advocate for best practices in transfusion medicine, Canadian Blood Services supports the International Collaboration for Transfusion Medicine Guidelines (ICTMG). This collaborative was spearheaded in 2011 by Heather Hume and later by Nadine Shehata, while they were medical officers at Canadian Blood Services. Now co-chaired by Katerina Pavenski and Simon Stanworth, with the support of our knowledge mobilization team, the collaborative engages more than 100 international subject matter experts and partner organizations, including a strategic partnership with the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT), to conduct and disseminate evidence-based practice guidelines. The collaborative’s website, ICTMG.org, is a platform for the global transfusion medicine community to access resources that facilitate the implementation of these guidelines’ recommendations into clinical practice. Information about ICTMG’s publications is primarily disseminated through targeted knowledge mobilization projects which may also be featured on Profedu.ca.
The latest major addition to Profedu.ca is the Virtual Tour, published in November 2024. Development of the Tour was led by Melanie Bodnar, a Canadian Blood Services medical officer, to provide healthcare professionals with an opportunity to explore our facilities and develop an appreciation for the complexity of the blood system. Given Canada’s expansive geography, the Tour is an exciting alternative to an in-person visit of the blood operator’s facilities. Designed for learners with varying levels of expertise and interests, the Tour takes participants on a self-directed journey from donation to transfusion. It promotes awareness of donor recruitment, collection of blood, donor testing, component manufacturing, labelling and storage of components, and the distribution of components to hospitals. To engage learners, the Tour features a series of photographs and graphics with accompanying text, interactive buttons and links to carefully curated resources for a deeper dive into transfusion medicine. While the basic content can be viewed in about 45 minutes, the links offer many detours to enrich the learner’s knowledge on specific transfusion medicine topics. The Virtual Tour functions as a bookshelf of educational materials from Profedu.ca, compiling available resources and highlighting their contextual relevance to the broader system.
Figure 2. Virtual Tour ticket
The creation of the Virtual Tour was supported by a BloodTechNet Award, a program launched by Canadian Blood Services in 2011 to support the development of innovative educational resources. Since its inception, the program has supported 18 projects, including the Learn Serology and Informed consent for blood transfusion courses featured in the Tour.
While best practices in transfusion medicine are continuously evolving, Canadian Blood Services remains committed to providing professionals with trusted education and training resources.
