Golden Horseshoe Education Supporting Transfusionists (GHEST) Symposium 2025
Written by: Sheena Scheuermann – ORBCoN Regional Project Coordinator
The mission of GHEST is to promote education, research, and best practices in Transfusion Medicine throughout the Golden Horseshoe region. The model is intended to be a non-profit venture therefore the symposiums are held at minimal cost to participants.
This year’s event was held in Oakville, Ontario. The symposium was well attended with 119 registrants for the day. We were very fortunate to have a patient speaker, Jules Royer who shared her journey with Multiple Myeloma. Attendees consistently express how impactful it is to have a patient speaker start the day.
Following this, Dr. Danyal Ladha presented an Introduction to Plasma Cell Dyscrasias, which provided the audience with information regarding diagnosis, treatment and insights into new advances in treatment.
Rebecca Barty introduced the new Perinatal Recommendation statements, which followed an open discussion with the attendees on potential challenges laboratories may see with implementing the new recommendations. We thank the attendees for their participation in the discussion as it provided useful insights into the challenges and possible tools that can be developed to assist with implementation.
The afternoon consisted of presentations by Dr. Sheharyar Raza on AI applications for blood bank, and Tracy Cameron on Blood Administration Bedside Audit followed with a live simulation of a transfusion lead by Laura Aseltine and Donna Berta. The audience was encouraged to participate and instructed to point out the errors in the process as they arose during the simulation. The feedback regarding this type of activity was positive and we look forward to doing something like this in the future.
The day was rounded out with a case study presentation regarding a patient with sickle cell anemia by Dr. Jordan Radigan. Including more case studies in the program continues to be a suggestion from attendees.
Thank you to our Sponsors CSL Behring, Grifols, Octapharma, CSTM and ORBCoN! Once again, a huge thank you to the speakers and organizing committee for another successful GHEST event.
Presentations will be posted on transfusionontario.org.