Unlocking the Clotting Cascade: Hands-On Learning at BDC 2025

At NBDF's “Unlocking the Clotting Cascade,” at NBDF’s Bleeding Disorders Conference, attendees discovered that sometimes the best way to understand complex biology is to get your hands dirty—or in this case, get crafty with cotton balls and straws. In a hands-on workshop, participants rolled up their sleeves to build the clotting process piece by piece using everyday craft supplies.

Heather Hicks, manager of education for NBDF, led the session with an approach that might have looked like child's play, but stressed that understanding how your blood clots is the first step in understanding your bleeding disorder. "You need know what's happening in your body in order to be able to really make informed decisions about what kind of treatment you decide to take," Hicks said.

Building Your Body's Emergency Response Team

At tables filled with straws, cotton balls, and other crafting items, Hicks explained that they would be building what happens when there is an injury and "your body's emergency response team" needs to form a clot.

The workshop unfolded in carefully designed stages that mirrored the actual clotting process:

Step 1: Vasoconstriction in Action 
Participants began with straws and red beads to represent blood vessels and platelets, demonstrating how vasoconstriction slows blood flow when injury occurs.

Step 2: The Platelet Plug 
Next, they created platelet plugs using tissue paper and cotton balls to cover a hole, simulating how platelets spread out to cover an injury site—the body's first line of defense against bleeding.

Step 3: The Clotting Cascade 
Then, Hicks introduced the concept of the clotting cascade, explaining the role of each factor in the process, including how some factors are activated and how they work together to form a clot. She walked participants through the extrinsic pathways initiated by tissue factor and factor VII, leading to the activation of factor X, which then interacts with factor V to form thrombin.

Step 4: The Final Mesh 
Finally, they used paper tags and twine to show how factor XIII cross-links with fibrin to create a strong mesh that helps the clot hold together—the final step that turns a temporary plug into a stable, lasting repair.

Connecting Craft to Care

This fun workshop highlighted the roles of factors in the extrinsic and intrinsic pathways, the common pathway, and the final step involving factor XIII. But Hicks didn't stop at the mechanics. She explained how missing factors can lead to bleeding disorders and how medications like factor replacements and rebalancing agents can help restore the process.

By the end of the session, attendees had literally built their understanding of hemostasis from the ground up. What started as a collection of craft supplies had become a tangible representation of one of the body's most critical processes—and more importantly, a foundation for making informed treatment decisions.

The Power of Hands-On Learning

The workshop proved that sometimes the most complex medical concepts become clearest when you can touch them, build them, and see them work with your own hands. In a field where understanding your condition is essential to managing it effectively, this creative approach to education opened doors to comprehension that traditional lectures might not reach.

Attendees left not just with knowledge about clotting factors and pathways, but with a memorable, tactile experience that made the invisible processes in their bodies feel real and understandable.