Blood donor satisfaction and intention of future donation

Blood centers are challenged to maintain an adequate blood inventory in the face of increasing blood utilization. A survey of 1735 blood centers (131) and hospitals (1604) in the United States showed that blood collection per thousand US population of donor age (18–65 years) was 85.6 in 2004 compared to 88.0 in 2001. This was a decrease of 2.7 percent from the 2001 rate. The number of whole blood (WB) and red blood cells (RBCs) transfused in 2004 totaled 14,182,000 units, a small but not significant increase over 2001 totals. During this time, blood centers were responsible for the collection of 14,305,000 WB and/or RBC units or 93.6 percent of the supply; hospitals collected 983,000 WB and/or RBC units or 6.4 percent of the total.1 More complex and advanced therapeutic treatments in the fields of surgery and hematology and oncology have led to increasing blood utilization. For example, according to the OPTN/UNOS Registry, the number of lung and liver transplants has been increasing from 1990 to 2005.2,3 In addition, 20,000 hematopoietic stem cell transplants are performed annually in the United States.4 This increased demand in the surgical and medical subspecialty arenas spurred the development of better blood collection technology (e.g., automated technology to collect multiple platelet [PLT] units, double RBCs, and plasma-RBCs) in recent years. Over the past two decades, more complex infectious disease testing and donor deferral and enhanced regulatory scrutiny has distracted blood centers from customer service to detailed documentation of the entire process. In addition to this redirected energy, enhanced market competition and cost cutting may have diverted resources from donor recruitment and retention.5 The development of robust recruitment and retention efforts is now more important than ever before. In the past several years blood centers have revisited and refocused their efforts in enhancing recruitment strategies in order to increase the number of new donors while retaining the current donors. Satisfaction with the blood donation process has been evaluated by others6,7 as an important factor in recruitment and retention programs. We are unaware, however, of studies examining blood donor satisfaction and motivation concurrently at the time of donation. To better understand how donors perceive satisfaction with a donation experience and increase understanding of motivational factors, we studied first-time and repeat blood donors with a brief anonymous survey administered during the donation process.