Improving the Donor Experience

This continues to be a cornerstone of our work.

We have worked to further improve the donor experience by reducing session waiting times, refining the appointments system and making venues more convenient for more people.

This year we opened the new Session Environment Test Centre at Emerald Park in Bristol. This provides a model donation suite designed to trial potential changes to the blood donor session environment, ensuring we only introduce tested changes to operational activity and lessons are learnt before implementation. This will minimise disruption to sessions ensure staff and donors receive the most efficient service possible while we modernise operations.

We have also developed new donation chairs to improve comfort and make it easier for staff to set up sessions. The chairs were tested in collaboration with NHS Innovation and will be used at blood donor sessions from late 2011.

Nursing teams received the Electronic Donor Selection Guidelines in September 2010, providing them with information on donor health queries and associated conditions to improve decision making around donor selection.

The Donor Health Check questionnaire completed by every donor before every donation was changed in September to allow regular donors to highlight details that have changed since their last donation rather than repeat historical information at each session.

 We also started collecting email addresses, with donors permission, to help us communicate with them more efficiently, saving costs and reducing the environmental impact of sending out letters.