The first week in November is Patient Blood Management Awareness Week. Patient blood management (PBM) is focused on techniques that decrease blood loss during procedures and prevent anemia.
Thorsten Haas, M.D., professor of anesthesiology and director of PBM, was awarded last year’s W. Martin Smith Interdisciplinary Patient Safety Award to support the implementation of a preoperative anemia pilot clinic.
The preoperative anemia clinic not only aims to screen patients for anemia but also to educate patients on anemia and what it means for them. Anemia is hugely prevalent worldwide, affecting more than 2.4 billion people.
“Prior to coming to the University of Florida, I’d been working to implement a PBM project with a colleague from hematology,” said Haas, who joined us from Zurich University Children’s Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland. “That’s when I learned how important it is to recognize that PBM isn’t something that can be done by any one department. I learned that from day one you have to include people from all areas and departments.”
Imke Casey, DNP, NI-BC, is the quality officer for the PBM program. “I was clinically active as a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA),” said Casey. “As a CRNA, I was interested in looking at ways that we could improve the quality of anesthesia care as healthcare began moving to value-based medicine.”
Casey pursued a subspecialty in informatics and looked for a role that would allow her to leverage her background in anesthesia, advanced clinical practice, and analytics, which led her to the PBM program at the University of Florida.
While identifying anemia in patients is important for reducing the risk of complications during high-risk procedures, Haas said there are also benefits to identifying and addressing it in all patients. Anemia screening results can be sent to a patient’s primary care provider who will then assist the patient in the next steps to take to treat the anemia.
"Blood health, in terms of anemia, is still underestimated in terms of how much it can help patients feel better. "
Thorsten Haas, M.D.
As the preoperative anemia clinic continues to grow, Haas hopes to expand to screen even more patients for anemia. “Screening all patients is an ambitious long-term goal, but it’s quick, noninvasive, and doesn’t hurt at all. This is a space where we can hopefully help to make our patient population a bit healthier, which would be amazing.”
Haas said it is an exciting time to work on PBM. “It’s kind of the missing link,” he said. “Blood health, in terms of anemia, is still underestimated in terms of how much it can help patients feel better. There are a lot of people doing research and trying to understand the effect of anemia on the entire population.”
“I think of it as a vital sign like blood pressure or cholesterol,” said Casey. “Having a general understanding of what anemia is and how it can be screened and treated should be as simple as understanding what high cholesterol is.”
Haas expanded on the importance of educating patients. “I hope to help patients understand just how valuable our blood is,” he said. “This is a precious good that we’re dealing with. Whatever we can do to avoid a blood transfusion and to maintain our hemoglobin levels will help us feel better not only when we need professional help but also on a daily basis.”
Haas and Casey said that early feedback from care teams in the hospital has been positive and is important to facilitate communication. They plan to continue analyzing the data that their clinic is producing and hope to expand the pilot program while establishing an understanding of the clinic’s importance and value.
Patient Blood Management Awareness Week runs from November 4 through November 8, 2024.