Help with medical essay

I am writing a medical essay for my school journal and possibly also for a competition. It is on the importance of blood transfusions, and why I believe the establishment of blood banks is one of the most importance changes in medicine. However, I’m am finding it difficult to come up with ways to structure the essay and express my thoughts, largely due to the restriction of the developments I mention having to occur after the start of the 20th century. Here is the outline I have so far, any advice would be much appreciated.

Introduction: talk about how transfusion medicine has advanced rapidly in the 20th century, and how you believe this is largely due to the introduction of blood banks.

Main body: give information on the uses of transfusions and how they have developed within the last century - I would like to include sources here.

Conclusion: summarise argument.

Please provide any ideas or answer the questions below.

Why are blood banks important? This is a crucial part of my essay but the internet doesn’t have much information on this.

Why are blood transfusions important? (There are a lot reasons of course, but I ask this so I can gather some ideas that I can link to the earlier question).

How did the introduction of blood banks globally influence the development of blood banks?

Are there any books/ websites that may help me write this? (Please list any you know of as i haven’t found much information online).

P.S - please don’t try to copy this idea. I have put a lot of effort into thinking about a topic I am passionate about and would like to enter this into some competitions.

I am writing a medical essay for my school journal and possibly also for a competition. It is on the importance of blood transfusions, and why I believe the establishment of blood banks is one of the most importance changes in medicine. However, I’m am finding it difficult to come up with ways to structure the essay and express my thoughts, largely due to the restriction of the developments I mention having to occur after the start of the 20th century. Here is the outline I have so far, any advice would be much appreciated.

Introduction: talk about how transfusion medicine has advanced rapidly in the 20th century, and how you believe this is largely due to the introduction of blood banks.

Main body: give information on the uses of transfusions and how they have developed within the last century - I would like to include sources here.

Conclusion: summarise argument.

Please provide any ideas or answer the questions below.

Why are blood banks important? This is a crucial part of my essay but the internet doesn’t have much information on this.

Why are blood transfusions important? (There are a lot reasons of course, but I ask this so I can gather some ideas that I can link to the earlier question).

How did the introduction of blood banks globally influence the development of blood banks?

Are there any books/ websites that may help me write this? (Please list any you know of as i haven’t found much information online).

P.S - please don’t try to copy this idea. I have put a lot of effort into thinking about a topic I am passionate about and would like to enter this into some competitions.

A really old paper that might open up thoughts and suggest a context for your paper:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1503557/

What competition are you entering

Blood banks being important should be one of the nicest bits to write - understanding that human blood has different blood types means that blood must be allocated properly to whoever needs it. Blood banks are crucial in maintaining safety as there are a host of immune problems that can happen if it isn't and that only causes more suffering for the patient.
Btw posting stuff that is competitive online is not a good idea and if anything defeats the point - there is a LOT of information online, you just have to look in the right places

That's a massive topic for an essay. You might want to think about cutting it down and making your question much more specific. You suggested that your topic was an argument about the importance of blood banks in advancing transfusion medicine - so perhaps in your main body you need less narrative and more argument.

There are plenty of LMICs around the world where there are not blood banks. I spent several years working in a bush hospital in subsaharan Africa, where we did not have a blood bank, however we managed to undertake blood transfusions of whole blood. Potential donors for a patient in need were cross matched and tested, then when a suitable donor had been found, a unit of blood was taken from the donor and transfused directly to the patient. Lots of practical and ethical challenges - reliance on the family to find suitable donors to test, limits to the degree of testing we could do for antibodies etc, limits to the blood products we could offer (whole blood only), significant possibility of not being able to find a suitable donor...

You could look at countries where there are established transfusion systems / blood banks, versus those where there are not. You might also want to think about the variety of blood products that a blood bank may issue - packed red cells, fresh frozen plasma, cryoprecipitate, platelets.... etc etc.

Just a few ideas for thought. Also, beware that the article link above, whilst interesting, is extremely outdated and is US - be very careful relying on it as a source to quote from. (You'll notice, for example, that the article is effectively from the pre-HIV era, before it was well known about).