The WFSA P-PBM Working Group and the WFSA P-PBM Steering Group have made significant strides over the past year, culminating in the upcoming pilot of our P-PBM course in 2025
What is P-PBM?
Perioperative patient blood management (P-PBM) addresses the problems of anaemia, blood loss and coagulopathy in the perioperative period. It is a patient-centred, systematic, evidence-based approach to improve patient outcomes by managing a patient’s own blood through diagnosis and aetiology-specific treatment of anaemia and preserving the patient’s own blood by minimizing blood loss and bleeding while promoting patient safety and empowerment (WHO, 2021).
In the past four decades, increased awareness of the inherent risks of transfusion has resulted in major initiatives to mitigate those risks through improvements in blood component safety.
Read WFSA President Daniela Filipescu outlining patient blood management and its importance
How is WFSA influencing change in the field of PBM?
Over the past year, WFSA has been encouraging member societies to sign the Santa Cruz Declaration. The declaration highlights the debilitating impact of iron deficiency, anaemia, bleeding, and coagulation disorders on both national public health services and the communities they serve.
Educational gaps in the field of PBM are among the main barriers to implementing PBM programmes. To promote education for implementing PBM principles and programmes in health professionals, we are is working on developing a new, fully WFSA-branded Perioperative Patient Blood Management (P-PBM) training course.
The training will take the form of a two-day facilitator course for anaesthesiologists, followed by a one-day multidisciplinary course for wider clinical teams.
The WFSA P-PBM Steering Group
The WFSA P-PBM Steering Group oversees the strategic direction of the whole WFSA P-PBM project. It is led by project co-chairs, WFSA President Prof Daniela Filipescu, and P-PBM expert Dr Fredy Ariza. Alongside WFSA President-Elect Dr Carolina Haylock Loor, and Dr Jolene Moore (chair of our SAFE Steering Group), these four form the WFSA group of P-PBM clinical experts.
The Steering Group also make up the review team for the content for the upcoming P-PBM Course – along with two junior reviewers. The content is written by collaborators, then reviewed and standardised to fit with the rest of the material.
Who are the WFSA P-PBM Collaborators?
At the project’s outset, the Steering Group recruited a wide range of Patient Blood Management experts and proponents to form the WFSA Working Group, with a main priority being a balanced representation of geography and gender.
Comprising 29 collaborators, the Working Group is primarily responsible for writing the P-PBM course content. The group was formed to write three days of teaching material from scratch (divided into 9 modules and 31 topics), which is why such a large and dedicated workforce is essential.
Some members of the Working Group will also be invited as faculty on our pilot P-PBM courses from 2025 onwards.
Beyond course development, many of the Working Group members contribute to additional project activities – including involvement in P-PBM events at WCA 2024 in Singapore.
Key congress events included the first in-person collaborators meeting, as well as a 90 minute workshop that piloted two topics of the course to 20 participants. The Working Group then shared achievements, expectations in concerns, and outlined timelines for achieving project goals, alongside suggestions and recommendations for conducting the first pilots of the course in 2025.
Working Group experts also presented a highlight anticipated P-PBM Scientific Session on P-PBM, and three pop-up P-PBM masterclasses at the WFSA Hub.
Looking ahead, the group is planning for an even larger PBM presence at various national, regional and world congresses, where we will continue to enlist the help of our Working Group members to promote awareness of P-PBM.
We would like to extend a huge thank you to all of our collaborators for dedicating their time and expertise to this important programme of work. We look forward to continuing this collaboration as we finalise the course for piloting.
Further resources
Between congresses and pilots, the WFSA also organises a number of communications activities related to P-PBM, which includes a blog article publication, as well as a series of webinars that are due to start in September 2024:
- Key P-PBM activities at WCA2024
- Endorsing the Santa Cruz Declaration
- What is PBM and why is it so important?
Cover photo: Some of our Steering Group and Collaborators meeting in-person at WCA 2024 in Singapore
