Daley Scott |
Hoxworth Blood Drive.
Hoxworth Blood Drive
This is a reflection on the Hoxworth blood drive that I hosted for a week in December.
From December 18th- December 22nd I hosted a blood drive with Hoxworth Blood Center. Hoxworth allows for people to host 3 different types of blood drives: their own blood drive in a location they chose, a mobile bus blood drive, and a virtual blood drive. I decided to chose the virtual blood drive because this allows for people to donate at any neighborhood location in the greater Cincinnati area. During the week of my blood drive in December, my friends, family, and co- workers could register online to donate in any neighborhood donor center, and they just had to enter my special code online for me to get credit for their donation.
I decided to host a Hoxworth Blood Drive because we give blood products all the time when I work on my unit at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. My patients often need packed red blood cells or platelets when their counts drop below their threshold. I understand how important blood donation is to my patients, and this is a way that I could get my friends, family, and co- workers to give back to the patients I take care of.
This blood drive took a lot of work to plan. I was in contact with the representative from Hoxworth who helped me plan the drive, and I was busy working on making marketing materials with her. However, after a lot of work with planning and marketing, the Hoxworth system got messed up, and there was no record of anybody donating during my blood drive. Even though I know that I donated, two of my family members donated, and a few of my friends, the Hoxworth IT support could not find the special code that everybody entered online. I was slightly disappointed because I wanted to see the final results of everyone that donated, but I know that at least 5 people told me that they had donated. Even if only those 5 people donated, that could be 15 lives that were saved because of my family and friends.
During the experience, I kept a journal where I discussed what I was currently doing for the blood drive, asked myself if there where any ways to reach more people that could donate, and keep track of any people I knew that had signed up to donate. I was planning on sharing my experience by sending a group email to all of the people that donated to let them know how many lives were saved with this blood drive, but because everything got messed up, I was only able to thank the people individually who told me they had donated.
Blood Drive Flyer
Here is one artifact from my experience. I decided to post the flyer that I sent around to my family, friends, and co- workers because this was one of the marketing materials that was created for my blood drive.