Donor Motivation

To motivate,recruit,and retain voluntary blood donors, dedicated people are needed. In whatever name we call them - donor motivator/donor organiser/donor recruiter/social worker/donor manager - their need is great for any transfusion service. They may work from within the transfusion service or from outside, to extend their voluntary service as labour of love individually or in an organised manner.

Anybody having empathy, compassion and respect for the ailing patients in their quest for a new lease of life can become a donor recruiter or motivator. He/she should be appropriately motivated and enthusiastic enough regarding blood donation.
The donor recruiters may be of three types:

Those who would like to organise blood donation camps in their place of work or their locality once or twice a year.
Those who would work as full-time staff within the transfusion service.
Those who would work closely with blood transfusion service as honorary trained volunteers on their own of on behalf of any social welfare organisation.

The tasks of donor motivators are:

To build up a general awareness campaign and spread the message of voluntary blood donation deep down in the community.
To recruit new donors and expand the donor base.
To retain donors and make them regular donors.
To organise outdoor blood donation camps.
To maintain a panel of rare group and on call donors.
To maintain liaison with donors, donor organization and blood banks
To assist in relieving emergency and shortage blood..

An effective donor motivator must be a blood donor, good organizer with good public relations skill and stamina.

The following are considered as qualities of Donor Motivators.

Compassion and Empathy
Understanding
Patience
Polite and pleasant personality
Imagination and Innovation
Enthusiasm
Strong motivation, conviction and dedication.
Knowledge of blood, donation and transfusion service
Competence in public relations
Communication skill.

The task of the donor motivator would be to assist blood transfusion service in:

Donor recruitment
Donor retention
Donor recognition
Donor counselling
Organising camps
Record keeping
Planning IEC materials
Evaluation of programmes launched.

Knowledge of the land and the people, ability to understand the psychology of non-donors and knowledge of blood and blood banking practice are essential for blood donor motivators.

Motivators can develop themselves by self study or library work or through observation in blood bank and blood donation camps. Those who have neither time nor facilities to develop themselves may avail themselves of the facilities of the structured workshop/training programme.

It is not difficult to develop faculty members for such training programmes of any region through training and workshops by inducting people from different disciplines, having good communication skill. They should be blood donors and must have seen recruitment programme blood donation camps. They must have direct knowledge of local blood bank (s) through visits and interaction. People from the field of bioscience, social science, management science, transfusion medicine, blood banking, haematology, pathology, medicine, surgery, education, journalism, public relations, theology, history, philosophy. literature may be groomed for this work through orientation programmes and teachers guidebooks prepared by experts in the field.

After training, the motivators should be able to:

Have an understanding of the basics of blood science and science of blood donation. Gather correct information and facts about blood donation and other related matter of the region.
Learn the techniques of motivating people to donate blood.
Earn competence in conducting motivational meetings and organising blood donation camps.
Develop skills in preparing materials for blood donor recruitment.
Apply all knowledge and experience so gained for the cause.

They must acquire a good concept on the principles and strategies of donor recruitment appropriate for the region. They must be competent to answer all possible questions that may crop up in donor motivation sessions.

Curricula or the training modules have to be designed to meet all these needs. Designing curriculum requires expertise. Each curriculum must have clearly spelt out objectives and duration of the programme would depend on the background of the trainees, their assimilation power and depth of the content. All training modules should be evaluated and modified with time to meet the need of the era.

Pretested training modules for blood donor motivators used by the Association of Voluntary Blood Donors. West Bengal appended in the annexure may be used for training of donor motivators. However, this is just a guide line. This may be modified to suit the need of the trainees.

“A student acquires a quarter of his knowledge from his teacher, another quarter from his own intelligence, the third quarter from his co-students and the last quarter in course of time from experience”.

Mahabharata
“Knowledge is not something to be packed away in some corner of our brain, but what enters into our being, colours our emotion, haunts our soul, and is as close to us as life itself”. - Dr Saruapalli Radhakrishnan

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