American Red Cross Bloodmobile at the Church

            Yesterday morning, I once again worked with a blood drive at a church in Oceanside. The weather was supposed to be warm and sunny but of course it was cold and foggy. There was a craft fair going on at the church and I was surprised to see so much involvement by all of the people that were there, working together to raise money for their youth group and church. And because of all the people that were there, the number of people who came to give blood went up tremendously. I was so surprised to see just how many people were in line, and I then began to realize that we were short staffed so they would all have to wait almost twice as long as they normally would. I tried to hurry up and get them through as quickly as possible but they still had to wait for a extended amount of time. A little while later through the day, my mom came and joined me and together, we were able to help talk to the blood donors and keep the time moving as fast as possible for them-so the wait didn’t seem as long. I thought it was pretty ironic how usually the bus is overstaffed and not that many people come, but the one day that we are understaffed we get around 20 people in 3 hours. I don’t even know what the goal was for that day, but I’m sure that we far exceeded it. For the future, I hope that the bloodmobile nurses and operators are able to have many more people helping so that we can get as many donors as possible in and out. We are so thankful for their donations and our whole goal is to make the experience as pleasing and comfortable as possible, and having a long wait can sometimes make them so nervous, impatient or frustrated so that they might change their mind and not donate, or be unable to give blood once they are inside. So its important to make sure that we can go through the entire procedure as quickly as possible, so they not only give one time-but will continue to return time and time again.