What is it about?
We consducted a trial to test the effectiveness of text message, letter, or telephone call reminders to improve return for counseling among nonresponding blood donors.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Each year millions of donors may donate and be determined to have reactive screening tests requiring notification and counseling. Notification and counseling by blood banks has an important public health role to help break the chain of additional transmission of some viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B and C virus (HBV and HCV), human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV), syphilis, and Chagas disease. Notification therefore brings benefits not only to donors but also potentially to others who could be exposed to infection and to society if onward transmission is reduced. However low return rates for notification and counseling among donors with reactive serologic screening tests have been reported worldwide.
Perspectives
Contrary to our initial hypothesis that text message would improve donor return, we observed a moderate return rate among donors who had not already responded to standard letter notification and found that a more personal approach, telephone call, proved to be more effective than text message. The results from this trial can be used in other blood centers to help guide donor notification procedures. The experience gained in the assessment of different recall modalities for nonrespondent donors can be extended to other areas of medicine where patients do not respond to standard notification approaches. Our results suggest that while text messages are easy to send, they may not enhance or improve interaction with health care services, suggesting that ease of delivery of the message alone is not adequate to lead to increased health care seeking behavior.
Dr Cesar de Almeida-Neto
Faculty of Medicine, University of São Paulo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A randomized trial to evaluate the use of text messaging, letter, and telephone call reminders to improve return of blood donors with reactive serologic tests, Transfusion, October 2016, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/trf.13882.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
