christine

Funny thing about birthdate that happened to me, personally, but I thought I'd share since it would come up donor related. Heard through my car insurance that I got a speeding ticket. Turns out there is a lady with my exact same name AND exact birthdate. We call her the "speedy Christine". Thank God her Driver's license was in PA and I am in NY or I would be paying for increased premiums. Just something extra to think about when using birthdate. I would say it is not a normal occurance though... Christine

We left it on the form because it seemed easier to leave it on the form/SOP than to have to put it back on should it reappear in the future.

Since we are based in NY and see a lot of people that aren't necessarily US citizens with SSN, we do not require SSN, although we do prefer it. Of course, with all the news of identity theft, no one wants to give it out anyway and some people are happy to provide us with the last 4 digits of their number as a compromise. We will take any government issued photo ID such as passport, driver's license, visas, etc as long as we can read it.

Hi, I am looking for a t-shirt supplier where I can just pick out a blood donor design from a "catalog" and customize it with own logo. Anyone recommend one (or more?) I hope this is the appropriate category for this topic...if not, I apologize in advance.

Hi Jane, thanks for input as a donor! Good idea - just ask the donors what it would take for them to convert to platelet donation (or why they decided not to do it) I already know that most of the hospital employees don't donate platelets due to time - it is so much faster to do the wb, even though they know it is a better product. As for my program, we don't have a huge budget, we just don't have a lot of platelet donors at this time...4-8 per month. Sad, isn't it? I personally would love to do it, but can't as my access vein is not good for apheresis So it is wb donations for me. Jeanette, does your staff have a particular spin on their appeal to wb donors to persuade them to switch?

We give the movie passes out to platelet donors all year round. Last summer I tried a promo where all hospital employees who gave 2 pints of whole blood between June and September received movie passes. They loved it and it sure bumped up those tough summer donations. I think I am going to open it up the the community at large. (The employees were a test group.) I did buy the movie passes from working advantage from my budget. The hospital I work for owns the luxury box so they are giving me one game for this promotion. I wish I could get an E-Chair, but we don't have enough platelet donors yet and not enough money in the budget. We are trying to see if we can find a donor, but we haven't been able to find one. Since we work in a hospital directly, we do have extra incentives for our employees, including time off, special raffles, parking and cafeteria vouchers. Employees who refer donors receive extra raffle entries for each donor. We do not have any other buddy system. In your buddy system, they can donate platelets together? We only have one machine so they'd have to take turns and be here for a few hours. I am trying to think of ideas for a buddy system for you...maybe you can do a quarterly raffle. I raffle off a DVD/VCR combo quarterly and at this point you can get them for $100 at Costco. Would any of the area restaurants or diners give you anything. I am thinking that you could offer the buddies a free or discounted lunch so they can celebrate saving lives together after donating.

Every platelet donor receives a free pair of movie tickets in addition to the regular donor gift we are giving out at that time. Another promotion I just started advertising yesterday is for a special raffle. All platelets donors will be entered to win 6 tickets to a luxury suite at Brooklyn's minor league baseball team. There will be 6 winners. I think that a good experience is the best special welcome/thank you of all. We have one guy who comes biweekly and he said we treat him so well that he enjoys visiting us. On the other side, my husband tried to donate platelets once and had a miserable experience. I think the needle wasn't inserted properly and it hurt. He will never do that again. He still gives whole blood though. What is your program like?

We are just starting out with our platelet program so I don't have a lot of experience, but so far I think staff should take it case by case. Some people want to chat or hear all about the procedure (especially if it is their first time) others just want to read their book or watch TV. I am not sure what you meant by "keep platelet donors from leaving"...