Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine Fellowship

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This 12-month fellowship is designed to prepare individuals for a career in blood banking/ transfusion medicine at an academic medical center, a community blood center, or a private practice setting where the individual will be responsible for managing a transfusion service and/or donor center. The fellowship provides primary training at The Children's Hospital of Colorado and the University of Colorado Hospital, two large referral centers for pediatric and adult medicine, respectively, and Vitalant (formerly Bonfils) Blood Center, a community blood center that is the major blood supplier for the state of Colorado. Additional training is done at the Veterans' Administration Medical Center, ClinImmune Labs (a reference immunology laboratory), and Allosource (a large tissue bank). Training encompasses all aspects of blood banking and transfusion medicine, including donor testing, blood processing, transfusion consultation, immunohematology reference services, therapeutic and donor apheresis, coagulation, tissue typing, peripheral blood stem cell collection, and blood bank management. Nearly 66,000 blood products are transfused at the primary fellowship hospitals. The Children’s Hospital has in-house molecular testing and its own donor center; they perform about 580 apheresis procedures each year, including plasma exchanges. The University Hospital performs nearly 1500 apheresis procedures each year, excluding plasma exchanges. Both hospitals collect immune effector cells and participate in clinical trials for new therapeutic interventions. 
The community blood center is part of the Vitalant network, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations dedicated to blood and biotherapies. Vitalant, which has been serving all of Colorado since 1943, operates across 28 states through a network of approximately 115 donation centers. It provides blood and specialized services to nearly 900 hospitals nationwide. In addition to routine blood collections, the Denver center performs mononuclear cell collections, including hematopoietic progenitor cell (HPC) apheresis for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and for immunotherapies such as Dendreon’s sipuleucel-T (Provenge), supplying the material essential for manufacturing these therapies. Vitalant also offers specialized laboratory testing, transfusion medicine consultation, and cutting-edge research capabilities. The Denver location serves as a field campus for the Vitalant Research Institute, an internationally recognized leader in scientific discovery, and is home to the Vitalant Innovation Center, further reinforcing its role in translational research, blood donor epidemiology, cellular therapy, and viral pathogen discovery.
The fellow is encouraged to participate in research projects leading to presentations at national meetings and publication. The fellow is also responsible for education of residents and medical students.

 

Applications

Fellowship application form

For application deadlines and openings see: Fellowship Programs Information

Please address all inquiries to:
Patricia Braund, Residency/Fellowship Coordinator, University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Department of Pathology, 12631 E. 17th Avenue, Mail Stop B216, Aurora, CO  80045. 

Phone:   (303) 724-4383 

Fax:        (303) 724-1105 

Email:     patricia.braund@cuanschutz.edu 

Website: Fellowship Programs, http://pathology.ucdenver.edu

Program Director:

Mary Berg, MD

Program Director of Blood Banking and Transfusion Medicine Fellowship

Professor of Clinical Practice - Blood Bank - Transfusion Medicine - Associate Residency Program Director