Posts Tagged With: Blood donation

Today is World Blood Donor Day. As some of you might be aware I donated blood when I used to live in America and I currently donate blood in the Netherlands. I donated yesterday, coincidentally.

All blood donors received an email which included a link to an online pdf. It was a really interesting read (it was about blood donation in general and blood donation during corona times). However since it is a pdf you will need to know Dutch to read it unfortunately. But the pdf also includes a design originally drawn by Dick Bruna in 1974 for the Dutch blood bank. It’s so cute!

It is a bit different donating in the Netherlands (but only a bit):

• blood donations are handled by Sanquin, a non-profit organization
• to donate blood you go to one of the Sanquin locations (unlike America where they go to libraries and schools and hold blood drives)
• before you can donate blood the first time you need to visit a Sanquin location where they do an intake exam and draw a bit of blood for testing purposes
• if your intake exam goes well you will be put on their register as a blood donor. You need to wait for them to contact you to come donate blood, every time.
  • gender matters – males are allow to donate up to five times a year, women up to three times a year (for whole blood – plasma is every two weeks and uses appointments)
  • blood type matters – the Netherlands is a small country and blood doesn’t last long, so some blood types are get called in more often

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I recently signed up at Sanquin to donate blood (read more about the company here). In the last blog post I covered what the differences were between donating in America and donating here in the Netherlands, but I will just add that after going through the full experience (not jut giving a bit of blood for them to run safety checks on), the actual process of drawing blood is exactly the same. And painless, though I do get the needle phobia!

One fun thing though – since it was my first time donating I received a cute little gift. A card with some more information and a key chain with my blood group on it.

And here’s a better look at the key chain:

Cute!

Oh, and this time I did everything in Dutch, because I rule. From the questionnaire to the short visit with the nurse to a 20 minute conversation with the person drawing my blood. NOTE: When I went in the first time to draw a bit of blood for the tests, I did ask for a questionnaire in English to confirm the questions were pretty much the same as what they ask in America. If you’re new to blood donation and Dutch isn’t your first language, I’d definitely recommend going with English the first time around. But still, go me!

Last month my workplace held a blood donation information session at work. Representatives from Sanquin, the national blood bank, came to pass out pamphlets for possible registration as a blood donor. I’ve actually donated at least a handful of times in America, but I was curious to see how the process differed between there and here. Some of the differences include:

1. The American system is based much more on blood donation on site – I never actually set foot within an actual blood bank. Instead I would donate at libraries or at work. The workers came to you. While they do have mobile blood banks in the Netherlands, more of the donations take place within the blood bank itself, after you receive a request to come in by mail.

Continue reading →