Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology is one of the largest clinical laboratories in the world. It is composed of more than 3,200 people working in 40 specialty laboratories performing more than 20 million tests a year. The department receives specimens for testing from Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic Health System and is a reference laboratory for other clinics and hospitals both nationally and internationally.

The Division of Transfusion Medicine consists of a highly skilled team of medical professionals, including physicians, scientists, medical technologists, medical technicians, lab assistants, biologists, chemists, microbiologists, geneticists, and other specialists, who work collaboratively. We value diversity and hope to cultivate diversity in our faculty.

The Division of Transfusion Medicine is responsible for the collection and testing of blood transfused to patients at Mayo Clinic Hospital — Rochester. The team also collects and processes hematopoietic stem cells for blood and bone marrow transplantation, as well as performs the testing necessary for organ transplantation. Transfusion medicine specialists, each with different interests and specialty areas, take an active part in your training.

Facilities and Practice Volume

The Division of Transfusion Medicine collects more than 40,000 units of blood from 17,000 local donors, more than 75,000 products are administered, and performs approximately 60,000 red cell compatibility tests and 71,000 ABO and Rh blood-typings annually. The laboratories of the Division of Transfusion Medicine are accredited by the AABB, the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT), the College of American Pathologists (CAP), and the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI).

The Therapeutic Apheresis Treatment Unit at Mayo Clinic is one of the oldest in the United States, starting operation in January 1974. It performs therapeutic apheresis procedures to treat patients with neurological, renal and blood diseases. Approximately 3,000 therapeutic apheresis procedures are performed each year, including approximately 1,000 peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell collections and 1,500 plasma exchanges.

From the Program Director

Thank you for your interest in our program! I believe Mayo Clinic has one of the best Transfusion Medicine fellowships in the country. We have a full transfusion medicine service from our hospital-based blood donor program, manufacturing of the blood products, immunohematology workups in our reference laboratory, and issuing the blood products through our hospital transfusion labs. There are two hospitals and an outpatient clinic here in Rochester, MN with approximately 2,000 beds and 100 operating rooms.  In addition to those fundamentals of the transfusion practice, this provides fellows with a lot of opportunity to practice.  In addition, we also have quite of bit of Cellular Therapy and HLA transplant testing within the Division of Transfusion Medicine. 

Our whole team is truly educators at heart. There is a dedicated group for education with standardized objectives for each of the rotations, but we also have a strong belief in an individualized route to achieving these objectives.  We have 10 different attending physicians or consultants who will provide varied perspective as you progress through the program.  Mayo Clinic has a strong culture of transparency and curiosity with encouragement for fellows to ask questions.

As a fellow, you will have the opportunity to be the point person in charge of the clinical service. This really puts an emphasis on the relationship between the fellow and consultant to balance ideas in the best way to take care of the needs of the patient.  The fellowship has graduated levels responsibility as you progress with final outcomes resulting in taking attending call with back-up and support provided by faculty. We invite you to learn more about our program and hope to hear from you!

Justin Kreuter, M.D.
Program Director

Program Faculty