interesting blood drive sighting - but not a bad one

[PepperElf]

gave blood yesterday and they had a new rule...

i guess the red cross got a complaint that the blood-drive squeeze balls are passed from person to person without being washed off or sanitized

strikes me as odd cos... well you shouldn't be giving blood anyway if you're sick, or if your immune system is shot but... that's beside the point

the red cross acknowledged the complaint and now they stuff the little squeeze-balls into disposable gloves

[LillFilly]

Huh. My red cross always put the ball in a glove. But, I guess you can be healthy and still have filthy hands.

[Magpie]

My first thought was less on the filthy hands, and more on the fact that there's needles there. I figured someone was worried that there was blood on the squeeze balls. And I know that this is no more likely than that they're on the chairs, but think about how disposable everything has to be.

[Gerrinson]

Rather than put the ball in a glove, why not just put a single glove on each of the people? That just makes more sense in my head.

[Hobbs]

Let's say you have ten donation 'stations.' each has a ball. that means, ten gloves. But let's also say you serve 150 people. Thus, you would need 150 gloves. Cost-effectively, it is cheaper to glove the ball and not the patron/donor.

[Broomjockey]

Let's say you have ten donation 'stations.' each has a ball. that means, ten gloves. But let's also say you serve 150 people. Thus, you would need 150 gloves. Cost-effectively, it is cheaper to glove the ball and not the patron/donor.

I'm not sure I understand your math. You still need 150 gloves, because the only way it's effective is if you reglove the ball after each donor. Otherwise, you still have the same people touching the same surface, you've just changed the surface that they're touching.

[pitmonkey]

They have been doing that at our blood banks here because of the flu season.

[PepperElf]

yeah either on the hand or on the glove you still have to change the glove out between donors

otherwise it'd be the same issue with the balls... going from person to person without being cleaned.



though if someone is getting blood on one of the squeeze balls, they're doing it wrong.


granted i once had a corpsman screw up a blood sample. it started squirting out from the little cap thing in an arc. it wasn't a lot of blood - maybe a 1/4th of a vial. actually it was kinda funny. poor guy was so embarrassed too

[Andara Bledin]

I've never seen a squeeze ball for donating. It's always been a barbell shaped squeezy.

And it's usually got a paper wrapped around the center that gets changed every time, so I guess my local Red Cross is ahead of the curve.

^-.-^

[PepperElf]

they usually have some kinda foamy stress ball for us to use
this time it was shaped like a baseball
but other times it's been a blood-drop or other kinds of balls

[Magpie]

We get, if anything, a wad of paper towels. Of course, when I bring a stuffed animal in with me I would rather expect them to not bother offering me anything, but I'd love to have a stress ball.