Project Updates: The 2011 Winners Give Us a Second Update

Jan 17, 2011 — This is the second project update in which the 2011 Learning Competition winners to let BloodTechNet supporters know how they are doing. Their first project update is also available.

Large Projects ($15,000 - $25,000)

Transfusion Quest — A flash-based trivia game for transfusion medicine technologists nationwide. Nicole Caldwell and Claire McWilliam report:

More than half of the game material has been submitted to the game developer. The rest of the content is still in the review process. Graphic and design updates are in progress on the submitted material. We are looking forward to have the game up and running in the next few months!

Transfusion Bits and Bytes — An online library of 15-minute live lectures with 5-minute question-and-answer sessions. The B.C. Provincial Blood Coordinating Office reports:

We have identified the first topic of our series as: Transfusion Reactions Basics – Theory and Case studies. The PBCO has spent a considerable amount of time in recent months developing key education for nurses, technologists and pathologists around transfusion reactions. We feel that this information would be of value to a broader audience and are preparing to condense the current content that has been developed into a set of four fifteen minute modules entitled “Transfusion Reactions Basics – Theory and Case Studies”. The recent education initiative has allowed us to identify and test run a number of e-learning platforms that are currently accessible for use, ie. Children & Women’s Media Services (Media Site) and PHSA Learning & Development (Learning Hub). The PBCO is currently waiting for the evaluation report from the project lead. Learning from this evaluation report will help PBCO identify the best approach to developing a series of Technologist education videos using an e-learning platform.

For more details, download the status update .

Transfusion Medicine Video Teaching — Twenty five-minute videos to educate Medical Laboratory Technologists who rotate through the Transfusion Lab and nursing staff during orientation at four hospital sites between Trenton and Brockville. Kelly Richmond reports:

Well we really do not have much to report with this update. We are at a stand still waiting for the 3rd year media students at our local college to get into placement and start working on recording and editing our videos. Over the next couple of months we will be fine tuning our scripts so we are prepared for when our media students can tackle our project. We had a great holiday season and wish everyone a Happy New Year in 2012.

Passing the Serology Torch — A series of hour-long weekend and evening wet/dry workshops held at the BC Institute of Technology that will be made available online. Cathy Lee reports:

• We met with our film producer on October 15th to discuss details of what he needs from us to make professional educational videos.
  • It was decided to change the venue from BCIT to CBS, Vancouver Centre and to perform “dry” workshops rather than try to film live “wet” workshops.
  • We decided on a date in January but have had to change it do to scheduling conflicts and will now do the initial filming on February 25th .
  • Since the meeting in October each presenter has made further edits and upgrades to the presentations they have given in the last two live Serology Workshops.
• There has been ongoing behind the scenes work re:
  • Discussing with Shanta Rohse the video size that can be posted on the BloodTechNet site.
  • We have not approached other organizations that may want to post the completed videos on their web sites but permission has been granted from Shanta Rohse to explore this option.
  • Production ideas and final budget for the filming is in progress.
  • Several microscopic pictures have been produced and all presenters have submitted their edited and updated presentations to our film producer to facilitate filming in February.
• We are on track to have the preliminary filming performed on February 25th and will know after that how long the film editing (and what further film footage may be required to complete each presentation) will take.

Medium Projects ($15,000 - $25,000)

Plasma Protein Reference Poster — A frequently updated reference poster about plasma protein products currently available in Canada. Janice Schwartz reports:

The plasma poster project is moving slowly along, we haven't had much time to work on it due to staffing shortages. We will be creating two posters, one with coagulation related products only and one with other plasma products such as IV immune globulin. We found that trying to fit all of the products on one poster was visually unappealing. We are also only including products that are currently distributed by Canadian Blood Services which did exclude a couple of products from the posters. The main body of the posters are complete and are being reviewed by our CBS contacts, once the information in deemed accurate we will be sending them off to Medical Media Services for designing and printing. One issue we have come across is attempting to translate the posters into French, right now we haven't located anyone that can accommodate our needs.

TransMed Trivia Game — A series of multiple choice questions to be distributed by CDROMs and card sets across Canada. Dyanne Marlok reports:

Unfortunately, I am not as far along on my project as I had hoped. I am still working on obtaining contributors for the questions. I am organizing the questions I do have and I am preparing them for the printer. I am glad I chose a project which is not too involved nor too complicated. I need to be more disciplined at dedicating my spare time to this project. For the third quarterly update in April I will have much more to report.

Transfusion Medicine Poster Series — A series of posters outlining basic Transfusion Medicine topics, with quizzes and keys to be distributed to Alberta hospitals. Donnell Wolff, Shauna Savill and Phil Savill report:

Three posters have been completed including Weak D, DAT and the Technologies posters. Phil is working his graphic design magic on the 4th poster – Buffy Coat production. Research has been completed on the final 2 posters. The next task will be to prepare quizzes that will be used by techs to test their knowledge once they have reviewed the posters. Supervisors in participating labs will have the answer key so that quizzes can be marked. We have had some slowdowns in production due to our very busy family lives and work commitments, but we are happy with the progress we are making and extremely thrilled with the end result – our amazing posters!