Our AABB- and Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP)-accredited Specialist in Blood Banking (SBB) Program had a successful year! We celebrated the graduation of our student, Mary Kathy Haddaway, on September 7, 2018. Kathy came to the Johns Hopkins Hospital Transfusion Medicine Division in June 2014 following graduation from Salisbury University with a bachelor’s degree in medical laboratory sciences. Kathy recently passed the SBB certification exam through American Society for Clinical Pathologists (ASCP). Blood Bank staff, faculty, and Kathy’s family celebrated her accomplishments and dedication at a graduation ceremony in the stately Wilmer Portrait Room.
Kathy was awarded the 2018 AABB Future Leaders, Specialist in Blood Banking Scholarship Award at the national AABB meeting in Boston on October 13, 2018 for her research project entitled “A comparison of hemostatic properties of whole blood collected with platelet-sparing vs. non-platelet-sparing leukoreduction filters: Considerations for implementation in a massive transfusion protocol.” We are very proud of Kathy and all our graduates, and look forward to their future growth and impact in the field.
Our new SBB student Kayla Erculiani began on September 10, 2018. Kayla came to the Johns Hopkins Hospital Transfusion Medicine Division following graduation from Salisbury University in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in medical laboratory science. We all look forward to another successful SBB year with Kayla.
The Johns Hopkins SBB Program is a 52-week work-study program where the employed MT or BB-certified technologist works in the Transfusion Medicine Laboratory to gain experience. The program consists of immunohematology reference lab training, didactic lectures, student presentations, a research project, and student rotations. The requirements for acceptance into the Johns Hopkins SBB Program are ASCP certification as a medical technologist or technologist in blood banking, and a minimum of two years of fulltime blood bank experience.
The application deadline is November 30 for consideration in the class beginning in September of the next year. There is no tuition for the program; students are fulltime employees (with benefits) of The Johns Hopkins Hospital who work 40 hours per week in the Transfusion Medicine Laboratory.
We have had several SBB graduates recently publish:
- Brunker, P.A.R., Ravindran, K., and Shirey, R.S. (2017), Modeling alloantibody formation to high-incidence red blood cell antigens in immune responders using genotypic data. Immunohematology, 33: 9-14.
- Lokhandwala, P. M., O’Neal, A., Patel, E. U., Brunker, P. A., Gehrie, E. A., Zheng, G., Kickler, T. S., Ness, P. M. and Tobian, A. A. (2018), Hemostatic profile and safety of pooled cryoprecipitate up to 120 hours after thawing. Transfusion, 58: 1126-1131.
- Erony, S. M., Marshall, C. E., Gehrie, E. A., Boyd, J. S., Ness, P. M., Tobian, A. A., Carroll, K. C., Blagg, L., Shifflett, L. and Bloch, E. M. (2018), The epidemiology of bacterial culture–positive and septic transfusion reactions at a large tertiary academic center: 2009 to 2016. Transfusion, 58: 1933-1939.
Our program website has additional information about The Johns Hopkins Hospital Specialist in Blood Banking Technology Program. If you are a graduate of our program and do not see your name listed, please contact Lorraine Blagg, [email protected].
Lorraine N. Blagg, MA, MLS(ASCP)CM SBB
Education & Development Coordinator
Transfusion Medicine Division
Department of Pathology
Johns Hopkins Hospital