Hospital Medicine Providers' Transfusion Knowledge: A Survey Study

Blood transfusion is one of the most common procedures performed in the inpatient setting. Although ordering a transfusion is a component of routine practice for most hospitalists, prior literature has shown that non-transfusion medicine physicians have poor to intermediate transfusion medicine knowledge (TMK). No recent study has evaluated TMK among hospitalists, including both attending hospitalists and advanced practice providers (APPs). Using a validated exam and a truncated version of a validated survey, we obtained an initial impression of attitudes, perceived and actual TMK. A total of 183 hospital medicine providers nation-wide completed the 12-question online survey and 20 question exam, including 155 attending hospitalists and 28 APPs. The overall mean score was 52% (range 20%-85%). Forty-one percent of participants reported less than 1 hour of training in transfusion medicine. Five of the seven questions with the worst performance (<25% correct) were on transfusion reactions. Almost all respondents reported consenting a patient for blood transfusion and 60% believed that TMK was very or extremely important in order to provide appropriate care for patients. More than 80% believed that having additional transfusion medicine education would be at least moderately helpful. Although routinely consenting patients for transfusion, hospital medicine providers may have insufficient TMK particularly as it pertains to transfusion reactions. The majority of hospitalists rated TMK important to clinical practice and had an interest in additional training, thus continuing medical education has the potential to improve TMK and patient care.