A Survey on the Perception about the Experience of Plasmapheresis in Volunteer Donors

Kim, Yoon Sook; Cho, Nam Sun

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Currently in Korea, the blood supply for transfusion is almost covered by whole blood donation. But, because the number of participants of the plasmapheresis is limited, the supply of plasma for the production of plasma fractionations depends on a considerable amount of plasma imported. For this reason, a facilitation of plasmapheresis is in an urgent need via stable donors' participation. This survey research was conducted to improve services for donors based on their sound understandings on plasmapheresis. METHOD: The subjects were 1,132 donors who participated plasmapheresis between August and September of 1996 and agreed on the research purposes.
RESULTS
Students and employees under 30 years old composed the major part of those who participated in plasmapheresis in major metropolitan areas including Seoul. The gender distribution was about 6:4. Most of the donors had a voluntary motivation to help others, but 47% of them did not know that blood donation is not related to HIV infection. Subjects responded that the environment for plasmapheresis was satisfacftory (92%). Factors that were related to unsatisfactory experience included boredom while pheresis (30%), scared feeling for the pain at the site of injection (28%), and uncomfortable feeling of blood flow (18%). 76% of the donors responded that they will participate in the plasmapheresis again, and the correlation between the level of satisfaction and intention of repeated participation was significant (p<0.01). Reasons for the refusal of repeated participation included the length of pheresis time (52%) and the pain at the site of injection (19%). 82% of the subjects thought the nurses were kind and 18% thought they were moderately kind. While 62% of the subjects who thought nurses were kind expressed their intention to participate in apheresis, while 59% of the subjects who thought the kindness was moderate said that they will not participate in apheresis. The correlation between the kindness of nurses and the level of understandig about plasmapheresis, and the level of uncomfortableness, and intention for repetitive participation were all significant (p<0.01).
CONCLUSION
Based on our survey we could concluded that the followings are of great importance for the facilitation of plasmapheresis: continual promotion for the lack of relationship between blood donation and HIV infection, kindly explanation of palsmapheresis by nurses, nurses' skillful operation of plasmapheresis, improvement of audio-visual environment in order not to make donors boring during aphresis.