We found that the stopping reasons for blood donors are dependent on gender, age and the number of donations. Stopping reasons differ substantially from barriers experienced by current, lapsed and non-donors. More research on preventing negative physical experiences and implementing more flexible opening hours are advised.

Different priorities of donors have been uncovered. These differences give suggestions to improve the country-specific donor management. Furthermore, the key findings provide a comprehensive overview of major future research domains.

No abstract

Sanquin, the organization responsible for blood collection in the Netherlands, aims to be donorfriendly. An important part of the perception of donor-friendliness is the experience of waiting times. At the same time, Sanquin needs to control the costs for blood collection. A significant step to shorten waiting times is to align walk-in arrivals, and staff capacity and shifts. We suggest a two-step procedure. First, we investigate two methods from queuing theory to compute the minimum number of staff members required for every half hour. Next, these minimum numbers of staff members will be used to determine optimal lengths and starting times of shifts with an Integer Linear Program. Finally, the practical implications of the method are shown with numerical results. These results show that the presented approach can bring significant savings while at the same time guaranteeing a waiting time-based service level for blood donors.