The emotional psychology of blood donors: a time‐course approach

Background Donor retention is a key concern for blood collection agencies around the world. Despite a substantial body of research on facilitators of and barriers to donor return, few successful interventions to promote donor return have resulted. A new approach We suggest that insufficient attention has been paid to donor emotional experience. To address this, we outline the Time-course of Emotion in Donation (TED) approach. First, we detail how identifying and understanding donor emotional experience across different time-points (i.e. in anticipation of donating, while donating, and in recollection of donating) may be key to developing effective strategies to boost donor retention. Second, we report initial results of a research project that assessed emotional experiences of first-time and novice whole blood donors. Donors reported their experience of several positive and negative emotions at four time-points: in the waiting area of the donation centre, in the phlebotomy chair before and after needle insertion, and in the refreshment area after donation. Results of preliminary analysis indicate that the experience of positive emotions was far more prevalent than of negative emotions. Third, we provide practical recommendations for researchers interested in adopting a TED approach. Our vision We describe a vision of how insight provided by a TED approach to donor psychology research might be implemented practically by blood collection agencies and practitioners alike. This vision includes innovative interventions to promote donor return as well as carefully curated donor communication strategies.