Lead Your Staff: Ethical Issues in Transfusion Medicine and Blood Banking

2020 AABB On-Demand eCast

Educational Track: Technical/Clinical
Topic: Transfusion Medicine
Intended Audience: Hospital Blood Banks, Immunohematology Reference Labs (IRL’s), Laboratory Staff, Managers/Supervisors, Medical Directors, Physicians, Residents/Fellows, Students (MD, MT, SBB), Technologists, Transfusion Safety Officers
Teaching Level: Intermediate

Director/Moderator: Isabella W. Martin, MD, Assistant Professor of Pathology, Medical Director of Microbiology, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH
Speakers: Hilary F. Ryder, MD, MS, FACP, FHM, Associate Professor of Medicine, Medical Education, The Dartmouth Institute, Chair, Clinical Ethics Committee, Geisel Medical School at Dartmouth, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH; Justin Kreuter, MD, Consultant and Instructor, Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN

Learning Objectives
After participating in this educational activity, participants should be able to:

• Discuss common ethical issues in the field of Transfusion Medicine today.
• Apply a practical ethics-based framework to approaching real-world Transfusion Medicine ethical dilemmas.
• Paraphrase how your hospital ethics committee can help you resolve ethical disputes, create ethical policies and provide ethics education.

Program Description: Practicing Transfusion Medicine can involve challenging ethical situations because blood is a precious medical resource with a limited shelf life. This eCast will explore ethical dilemmas such as massive transfusion, blood refusal, donor incentives, informed consent and policies about men who have sex with men. These topics will be approached from the perspective of both an ethicist and a transfusion medicine specialist, with the goal of applying a practical ethics framework.