Sanitation optional,
Just use a Band-Aid.
Today marked my donation of blood in the city where the Red Cross was born: Geneva!
I have to say that the blood donation process here in Europe is a bit different, however. Let's do a quick runthrough:
American system:
- Arrive
- Sign in
- Read (or don't read, but tell them you've read) a binder of approximately 12 pages describing risks of blood donation, medications you can't be taking, countries you can't have visited, diseases you can't have had, the fact that you can't be homosexual, the fact that you can't have had sex with a homosexual, body modifications you can't have had in the last year (bone grafts, tattoos, piercings, what have you)
- Wait
- Sign in with your name, birth date, and SSN
- Get called up to answer a series of 40-ish computer questions that are basically everything that was covered in the binder
- Confirm with your name, birth date, and SSN that you are, in fact, the same person who sat down
- Have your blood pressure taken
- Have your iron measured
- Confirm, again, that you are who you say you are
- Get handed some blood bags with your name and birth date and SSN on them
- Walk over to the blood donation tables
- Confirm, again, that these bags are, indeed, your own
- Lie down on the table
- Have your vein checked and outlined in magic marker
- Have your needle site cleaned for no less than 30 seconds by betadine
- Have your needle site cleaned for no less than 10 seconds by iodine
- Get stuck
- Have the needle covered by a piece of gauze so you don't freak out
- Bleed for a while
- Watch the blood bag, which is attached to a little lever that will drop when it is heavy enough (i.e. full)
- Get unplugged
- Get bandaged
- Eat little snacks like raisins and pre-packaged cookies
- Be forced to remove your bandage lest you forget it and it cut off circulation to your arm
- Be given a paper about the possible side-effects of blood donation
- Be given a paper with your whole blood number in case you have questions
In Europe, though:
- Arrive
- Sign in with a questionnaire of about 40 questions covering questions from the tattoo and piercing questions to whether you've been outside Europe in the past 6 months
- Have your iron measured
- Have your blood pressure taken
- Walk over to the blood donation chairs
- Sit down in a chair
- Have your vein checked
- Have your vein briefly cleaned by some unknown substance
- Get stuck
- Bleed for a while
- Watch the blood bag, which is sitting on a little rocking scale which will beep when it's heavy enough (i.e. full)
- Get unplugged
- Get bandaged
- Eat awesome snacks like fresh apple pie and croissants and brownies and have tea and coffee and juice and lemonade and gatorade
That's it. Yum.
A few things concerned me, though. No one wears gloves in Europe? Victor pointed out that they washed their hands in alcohol, but... latex just makes me happier. Eep.
They had the jankest Band-Aids in the world. Instead of little individual ones for each person, they'd just got a big one that they cut up to the appropriate size for each person.
On the other hand, it felt like a much more grown up system. They weren't babying anyone by putting a piece of gauze on his needle so he wouldn't see it, for example. They didn't ask me every 2 minutes if I remained the same person. They didn't warn me about what I shouldn't do when I left, because they recognised that I'm a reasonable person (and that I'm living in a place which is not particularly litigious for this sort of thing).
I dunno. For your judgement.
