HOSA partnered with the Red Cross and recently completed their first blood drive of the year. The event is a staple of Millard West, but with the new schedule and shifting of responsibilities still had its challenges when I came to set up and execute the drive.
Students in HOSA who are open to get more experience in health professions get to work alongside the red cross to put on the blood drive. Not only do they help with check in and coordinating times for each person to donate but they also go around making sure no one gets sick and no one passes out. Also reminding people to drink water after donating and just checking in on people to make sure everything goes smoothly and they are feeling good.
“I volunteer at the blood drive because I enjoy being able to help out the Red Cross and help make sure people are able and comfortable donating blood,” junior Spencer Ford said. “It helps out with my interest in learning more about what things are like in the health field.”
Donating blood is extremely important at any time but it is a major importance currently due to a national blood shortage. One person donating blood can save up to three lives. Many different types of people need blood from mothers who give birth to people in car crashes. It only takes 45 minutes to donated blood and your body will naturally regenerate more blood.
“I decided to donate gloss because HOSA is always talking about how important is it’s and it felt good to help people that need blood,” junior Ainsley Van Deun said. “It was super easy, I walked in, got checked in. They ran some tests to make sure I was able to donate. All of the people who take the blood are extremely nice, and you just lay in the chair and hang out for about 20 minutes.”
This year there was a shift in focus for organizing the blood drive and making it more student-led. Junior Sophia Krobot served as head blood drive chair, And led the effort both by organizing volunteers from HOSA and staying in contact with a Red Cross coordinator to set up the time and date of the drive.
“We have a Red Cross coordinator and she and I would go back and forth about times and dates,” Krobot said. “It was hard planning a day with the new schedule. We were thinking about moving it to a Thursday because the schedule makes it really hard with 45 minute classes when it takes about 45 minutes to donate blood if there’s no complications. It was kinda hard to coordinate what class people wanna miss because it might go over into another one. We decided to keep it on a Friday for the first one this year because that’s the day it has always been, but depending on the feedback we might change that in the future.”
The blood drive is an important event for HOSA every single year because it gives students a chance to work with people in the Red Cross and see what they do within the health profession everyday. As well as give back to the community during a National Blood shortage and doing their part to help save lives.
