Blood School.

Objectives: To describe and evaluate a laboratory-based nursing education activity on transfusion to improve patient safety, an often-neglected opportunity.

Methods: Our transfusion service developed a day-long "Blood School" to provide knowledge, skills, and behaviors to nurses in four aspects of transfusion: blood ordering, sample collection, transfusion procedures, and recognition and reporting of transfusion reactions. We collected survey data on methods and effects of training and hard data on the number of reported patient safety events.