Informed consent for blood transfusion as a transfusion medicine educational intervention

SUMMARY. The aim here was to determine the effectiveness of a transfusion medicine educational intervention in a medicine core clerkship program.
Third-year medical students enrolled in their medicine core clerkship rotations at tertiary care hospitals affiliated with our institution underwent a two-part educational intervention that incorporated a transfusion medicine curriculum within the context of the medicolegal, ethical and educational elements of informed consent. Part one was a 1-h didactic session on standards of practice for red blood cell transfusion. Part two was a 90-min multidisciplinary workshop on informed consent. The effectiveness of the educational intervention was analysed by an objective structured clinical evaluation.
The student group receiving the educational intervention scored significantly higher than in the comparison group (65.8 ± 9.2 vs. 54.1 ± 10.56, P <0.001). When student scores were used to determine changes in student response patterns over time, the largest change occurred in identifying possible other options to allogeneic blood transfusion.
These results suggest that a transfusion medicine curriculum using an informed consent model can be used effectively as an educational intervention in a medicine core clerkship programme.