Blood donation mobile applications: are donors ready?

Background: The rapid rise of mobile communication technologies has the potential to dramatically change and improve blood donor recruitment and retention efforts.

Study Design And Methods: E-mail invitations were sent to blood donors in a large metropolitan area to participate in a Web-based survey designed to gauge their readiness and interest level for a blood donation mobile application ("app").

Results: A total of 982 ethnically diverse respondents of various age groups and prior donation experiences were surveyed.

The poor accuracy of indirect measurements of cadaveric donor kidney weights.

Reports that examined the issue of whether transplantation of inadequate nephron mass may be a risk factor for long-term allograft failure yielded conflicting results. One of the more accurate methods of estimating glomerular mass is kidney weight. Most of the clinical studies used body surface area (BSA) or kidney length as estimates of kidney weight.

Developing an educational needs assessment.

Nurse educators routinely are asked to assess learning needs. Step-by-step guidelines for formulating and implementing an educational needs assessment are provided. The nurse educator who is familiar with conducting a needs assessment can obtain required baseline information to make decisions in various situations.