Association of blood donation related fears with donors’ characteristics and their impact on future donation

Abstract

Background: To find the association of blood donation related fears with the donors’ characteristics like age, education level and previous donation history and to find their impact on future donation. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study carried out at a tertiary care hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, from June to December 2022. A self-designed questionnaire addressing five types of fears was filled from 700 blood donors through interview after taking informed consent. Data was analyzed by using IBM-SPSS V23. Results: Among 700 participants, 91.1% were male with mean age ±SD of 28.9±7.1years and 8.9% were female with mean age of 24.5±3.7years. For previous donation experience, the cohort was divided into five subgroups in which 19.7% had never donated blood and 11.3% had six or more donations. Fears were significantly reduced among donors with frequent donations compared to those with reduced donations. However, 4-5% had some retained fears. Reduced fears were observed in donors with higher education except for the fear of needle. Fears of having blood drawn/seeing blood and fear of fainting were more in younger donors. Out of 5.71% donors who were not willing for voluntary blood donation in future, 95% had fears. Conclusions: Frequent blood donations, higher education level and age more than 30 years were associated with reduced blood donation associated fears among blood donors. The presence of fears has negative relation with willingness for future blood donations.