Abstract
Initial education and training for medical students and residents are important to the establishment of appropriate and safe blood transfusion. Nevertheless, recent diversification in blood transfusion has enlarged routine work in transfusion units, especially in medical university hospitals. At the same time, many medical universities have limitations on the number of medical instructor positions and available class time. Therefore, many institutions cannot provide enough education time. In this study, we investigated education for blood transfusion medicine in a university hospital and the role of the clinical laboratory technologist in clinical training.
The surveys were done as part of collaboration studies for the 2009 Transfusion Conference of University Hospitals. The investigation items included training methods, content, person in charge, time, and degree of achievement. Among the 89 hospitals surveyed, responses were obtained from 70. In addition to lecture style education, small group training of medical students and residents was adopted in 63 (90%) and 37 (53%) institutions, respectively. Medical technologists played considerable roles in small group training of students and residents in 37 (59%) and 29 (78%) institutions, respectively. The small group training of students and residents included blood typing (97% and 95%, respectively), cross-matching (81% and 70%, respectively) and analysis of irregular erythrocyte antibodies (21% and 16%, respectively). The institutions adopting cross-matching for residents had significantly more technologists.
It was clear that clinical laboratory technologists in blood transfusion sections played a major role in blood transfusion studies and education. With limited time and human resources, transfusion physicians and clinical laboratory technologists have cooperated with each other and are actively working in blood transfusion medical education. The end goal is to supply safe, reasonable blood transfusion therapy to patients; however, deteriorating conditions in medical university hospitals makes achieving this ever more difficult.
