Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine

The Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center is a 504-bed adult and pediatric tertiary care hospital that is the main teaching hospital of the Penn State College of Medicine.  It includes a Level I trauma center and a Level III neonatal intensive care unit, and is a major referral center for complicated adult and pediatric hematology/oncology cases.  Hershey Medical Center has 54 ACGME-accredited residency and fellowship programs and over 500 residents/fellows. 

The Division of Clinical Pathology has undergone significant growth in the past 10 years and has abundant clinical opportunities for training a fellow in Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine.  The Blood Bank/Transfusion/Apheresis Service of the Hershey Medical Center is a full service operation with allogeneic and autologous whole blood and hematopoietic stem cell collections, plateletpheresis collection, therapeutic phlebotomy, and therapeutic apheresis. 

Annually, over 20,000 units of allogeneic red blood cells (approximately 50,000 total blood components) are transfused, and approximately 1200 therapeutic apheresis procedures are performed (including plasma exchange, red cell exchange, cytoreduction, and peripheral blood stem cell collections).  The fellow will work closely with the Medical Director and four other clinical pathologists to provide clinical consultation to the medical staff in areas of apheresis, immunohematology, and clinical transfusion medicine.  Additional training in coagulation, hematopoietic stem cell processing, and histocompatibility (HLA) are also part of the program. Elective time is also available.

The Blood Bank/Transfusion/Apheresis Service is accredited by FACT, AABB, and CAP; the HLA Laboratory is accredited by ASHI and by CAP; and the fellowship is accredited by the ACGME.  The fellow will also have opportunities for teaching medical students, technologists, residents, and fellows from other services.   Over the years the Clinical Pathology training program at Penn State Hershey Medical Center has placed a number of our residents into prestigious Blood Bank/Transfusion Medicine fellowships around the country.  We are pleased to be able to now offer our own training program; our first fellow completed the program during the 2008-09 academic year.  In summary, this program will provide the fellow with a rich and rewarding educational experience leading to enhanced expertise in Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine that can form a basis for a career in the academic or community practice settings.