The Johns Hopkins Hospital Specialist in Blood Bank Technology Program

Rabindra Sharma, Dr. Brooks Jackson, and Peter Martin

Our Specialist in Blood Banking (SBB) Program had a big year in 2011! Our program successfully achieved reaccreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs and from the American Association of Blood Banks, and we had two students graduate and had three students begin the program.

Graduation for Peter Martin and Rabindra Sharma was held on October 6, 2011 in the Wilmer Portrait Room where many staff and faculty celebrated their achievements. Peter Martin plans to continue to read, study, and perfect the art of investigating serologic cases.

Rabindra Sharma plans to look into getting Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or Master of Public Health (MPH) or go into information technology-related blood bank work.

Our new SBB students, Alissa Arellano, Milagros Perez, and Heather Smith began on September 8, 2011.

Alissa came to the Johns Hopkins Hospital Transfusion Medicine Division in the spring of 2010. She is originally from western Massachusetts and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from Arizona State University. She worked as a travelling technologist in many community hospital laboratories before coming to Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Mila came to the Johns Hopkins Hospital Transfusion Medicine Division in early 2011. She is originally from Venezuela and came to the United States to become a U.S. citizen, to study and work. She worked at the King Faisal Hospital in Saudi Arabia for nine years before coming to Johns Hopkins.

Heather is a 2009 graduate of the University of Maryland and joined the staff of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Transfusion Medicine Division after her Blood Bank rotation with us. She loves to teach and has been helping out with the Hematology course at University of Maryland.

We look forward to another successful SBB year with our new students, Alissa, Mila, and Heather.

The Johns Hopkins SBB Program is a 52-week work-study program where the employed medical technologist or blood bank-certified technologist works in the Transfusion Medicine Lab 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 Laboratory Scientist (Medical Technologist) or Technologist in Blood Banking and a minimum of two years fulltime Blood Bank experience. The application deadline is January 31 for consideration in the class beginning in September of that year. There is no tuition for the program — students are full time employees (with benefits) of Johns Hopkins Hospital who work 40 hours per week in the Transfusion Medicine Lab.