Breeanna Noi Capstone

For my senior Capstone, I decided to host a blood drive and I worked on creating a website for future SLA’ers or anyone in general to locate if they wanted to host their own blood drive. The main reason for my Capstone is because next year, I will be studying pre-nursing and rather than just shadowing a nurse and learning about what goes on in hospitals, I wanted to do something more and help people firsthand. Well, I’ll be helping firsthand in a way. I won’t be interacting with patients, but I will help them by signing everyone up for donations. The blood drive was a perfect way to do that because Philadelphia is a huge city with a lot of surrounding hospitals full of patients who need all different types of blood. Not only was I able to help patients directly, but I was able to educate some of my peers along with the Red Cross employees who came to visit. Not everyone realizes how much we need blood in hospitals because they help keep patients healthy rather than for blood transfusions. 

In order to complete this Capstone, the first thing I had to do was find a contact from the Red Cross to guide me through the event process. I did not know how to plan such an important event so I asked a peer who had previously hosted a blood drive for her contact person. After we got in contact, we met and I got to get a better understanding of the blood drive. We met occasionally, but when we did, we established goals to have completed before our next meeting.

I think the most difficult thing about the event was when we planned it. The event was on the week after the week we got back from Spring Break. Right after Spring Break, I had to hustle to remind everyone to sign up for the blood drive. However we got over that issue by going to people to sign up rather than just waiting for them to find time on their own. I guess that was the most successful way to get people interested and to make it easier on them because it was Benchmark season at the time.

What I am most proud of in this Capstone was that the entire SLA community contributed to the blood drive in some way. Although not everyone donated, a lot of my peers have shown an interest but due to the weight requirements, they could not. Even if not everyone had the chance to donate if they wanted to, they still alerted their friends to participate as well. I did not expect for so many people to be interested in donating.

From this process, I learned more about the blood drive process. While I was researching things to teach everyone else, I also learned more about blood and everything in between for myself as well. Not only did I learn the scientific requirements for this Capstone, but I also learned how to host a school event. When gathering participants for an event, you have to make everything available and in their face in a way. Sometimes people are interested and consider doing something, but they forget by the time they have a moment to sign up. So going to all of the juniors and seniors in their advisories personally, I gathered more participants/donors than I had anticipated.

If I could do this Capstone all over again, I would definitely plan a better date to recruit donors. The event being the second Tuesday right after Spring Break made it difficult because I had a week to crunch down on time and get everyone to sign up. If I were to do this in the future, I would definitely keep the event date in mind. But other than that, I believe this was very successful. I think SLA will be better because I have set a new bar for future blood drive hosts. We broke our SLA record of donors and although the sign ups were at a rocky start, with my team’s determination to get as many people as we possibly could and the diversity of my team, we have been able to have a great drive.