How to Motivate Whole Blood Donors to Become Plasma Donors

This study tested the efficacy of interventions to recruit new plasma donors among whole blood donors. A sample of 924 donors was randomized to one of three conditions: control; information only by nurse; and information plus self-positive image message by nurse (SPI). Participants in the control condition only received a leaflet describing the plasma donation procedure. In the two experimental conditions the leaflet was explained face-to-face by a nurse. The dependent variables were the proportion of new plasma donors and the number of donations at six months. Overall, 141 (15.3%) new plasma donors were recruited at six months. There were higher proportions of new plasma donors in the two experimental conditions compared to the control condition (); the two experimental conditions did not differ. Also, compared to the control condition, those in the experimental conditions (all ) gave plasma more often (information only by nurse:？？; SPI: ); the SPI intervention significantly outperformed () the information only by nurse condition. The results suggest that references to feelings of SPI such as feeling good and being proud and that giving plasma is a rewarding personal experience favor a higher frequency of plasma donation. 1. Introduction In the USA, plasma intended for fractionation is obtained mainly from remunerated donors [1]. Therefore, the main challenge for commercial plasma collectors in the US is to apply procedures that will safeguard the quality and safety of the product. In many other countries, however, nonremunerated plasma donation is the usual practice. This means that specific interventions not based on monetary incentives are required to recruit plasma donors. To our knowledge, in the scientific literature only a few studies have reported the impact of interventions on plasma donor recruitment [2–5]. Each of these interventions mainly provided information about the plasma donation procedure and was successful in recruiting a significant number of new plasma donors. Nonetheless, it was recently shown that one-on-one conversation was the best approach to motivate whole blood donors to become plasma donors especially if the conversation was donor-oriented, that is, focusing on “donor’s needs and welfare” [5]. This latter observation is in agreement with the results reported by Ferguson et al. [6], showing that committed blood donors are more willing to donate blood when exposed to a benevolence message. Moreover, their results were consistent with those of Weyant [7] who showed that when helping costs are high (e.g., giving plasma),