Iowa State’s blood drive is accepting donations next week and participants will get a free t-shirt, the chance to win some prizes and a $10 Amazon gift card sent to their email address.
The blood drive will be open for donations from March 10- 12 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will be located in the Memorial Union’s Great Hall.
Kyle Nord, co-director of the blood drive, said to donate students will need their drivers license.
“If you had signed up to donate, then you’d have to go through the rapid pass completions, [it] kind of goes over some background checks to make sure that you are eligible to actually donate blood,” Nord said.
Nord said students will talk about their health history in the rapid pass and then they decide if they are giving a normal blood donation or a power red donation.
“There’s really not a big difference between power red and normal donation,” Nord said. “Power red, I would say it’s about five to 10 minutes longer than a normal donation. But the difference between power red is that you actually get saline back into your system. You actually get everything back, plus saline and the saline helps you feel rehydrated, makes you feel better but that is obviously only possible if you have a specific blood type. Those blood types are O negative, O positive, A negative or B negative.”
Nord said Red Cross nurses will be there to help if needed.
“There’s kind of like a separate area that the nurses can take care of them if they collapse from nervousness because there’s some people, in terms of getting needles and blood taken – they tend to pass out, ” Nord said.
However, Nord said that is not as common as it once was.
“There’s definitely extra precautions to take after you donate,” Nord said. “There is kind of like a snack area where you kind of get to refuel everything [and] get some juice.”
To sign up to donate, follow these few steps according to Nord:
- Go to https://www.redcrossblood.org/
- Enter “Cyclones” in find a blood drive
- Pick a date and time
- Record who is signing up in donor reference form
