Transfusion Medicine & Blood Bank Rotation

The Transfusion Medicine/Blood Bank rotation at UNMC is so much more than just classic blood banking. We are a transfusion lab that supports a level I trauma center and a state of the art cancer center. In other words, the volumes and complexity of the serological workup are on the very high level with hands on patient care interaction. The residents are actively involved in analyzing serologic workups, writing up transfusion reaction, managing inventory and selection of special blood products for complicated situations (like platelet refractoriness or anaphylactic reaction prevention). The UNMC division of transfusion medicine is also managing apheresis units overseeing therapeutic plasma exchanges, red cell exchanges for sickle cell disease and thalassemia patients and collection of hematopoietic stem cells by apheresis. Residents are being taught the cutting-edge concepts of cellular therapy by participating in the work of the Biologics Production Facility (state of the art cellular therapy lab). The residents are also involved in interpretation of the coagulation tests, which nicely ties into recommendations of appropriate blood products selection for the complex medical situations. Overall, we offer a comprehensive training in all aspects of Transfusion Medicine, Cell Therapy and Coagulation and feel very confident about our trainees being able to handle most of the transfusion medicine questions on their own at the completion of the training.