Transfusion Medicine
Academic Half Days
Academic half days for all Transfusion Medicine Residents in Canada are organized jointly by the Chief Resident and the CBS national Training Coordinator. Half-days occur on a weekly basis and consist of a rotating schedule of Journal Club sessions, Topic Teaching sessions, Case-Based Learning & Textbook Review sessions and Scientific Sessions. All sessions are done by teleconference with the slide set distributed in advance. The chief resident moderates the session and one or more faculty members including a content expert are invited to attend. All sessions have pre-set goals and objectives and evaluation forms. Academic half day sessions meet criteria for Royal College CME credit. The current schedule for academic half-day as well as archived presentations from past academic half-days are kept on the CBS Education Website.
Journal Club sessions involve the discussion and critical appraisal of a recent journal article relevant to Transfusion Medicine. The sessions are organized to allow for questions from the Transfusion Medicine residents first followed by a general discussion involving all participants.
Topic Teaching sessions are a series of tutorials that provides
guidance from experts on key topics in transfusion medicine - what is important?
What is relevant? CBS Medical and Scientific staff will take a lead role
in providing this guidance. These sessions are designed to cover specific
RCPSC Subspecialty Committee Topics which are identified in the distributed
pre-reading material.
Case Based Learning & Textbook Review sessions. These sessions follow a 2-year rotating curriculum that covers most chapters of 3 key Transfusion Medicine textbooks- Mollison’s Hillyer and the AABB technical manual (a hard copy of these textbooks are available as references in the Program Director’s office.)
Scientific Sessions are presentations by CBS faculty of cutting edge science. All of these learning activities are self-approved group learning activities (Section 1) as defined by the Maintenance of Certification program of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
The Resident will also be expected to attend the educational sessions organized for them. These sessions are designed to give Residents practical experience about day to day cases illustrating Transfusion Medicine issues that arise in a hospital transfusion laboratory and to cover the learning objectives. In addition, within each rotation, the curriculum is designed to ensure that Residents meet all goals and objectives through self-directed learning and one-on-one teaching sessions with local experts and technical specialists.
Other formal academic activities for residents are weekly Transfusion Medicine teaching rounds, weekly Transfusion Medicine Laboratory Serology Sessions, monthly Transfusion Operations meetings, monthly Transfusion Committee meetings, and bi-monthly Research in Progress meetings.
