Local student benefits through plasma donor recruitment bursary

By Ry Clarke - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on December 20, 2022.

Submitted photo Lane Brandon, donor centre manager, congratulates Eliza Poettcker for winning the prize of $3,000 for recruiting 30 plasma donors.

A Lethbridge College nursing student is celebrating a win granting them a $3,000 bursary towards education for recruiting plasma donors for Canadian Blood Services.

Eliza Poettcker won the education-endowment by signing up 30 donors at a plasma donor centre between May and October 2022. This was the first time Canadian Blood Services offered a bursary program to encourage students to recruit plasma donors and receive funds towards their post-secondary studies.

“It was a cool experience, the fact that I won was a cool little bonus,” said Poettcker. “What they would have me do is sign up with the Canadian Blood Services Program and I would go talk to people about the program and answer any questions they had, educate them and promote donating. When they signed up using my link to make blood plasma accounts, I started collecting almost a team of people through my online plasma account.”

During the competition, Poettcker found it was a great opportunity to help recruit donors but also help educate people on donating to the service.

“People were confused what the difference was between blood and plasma. It was a big thing, because we have changed. It used to be blood, but now it’s plasma. A lot of people were like, ‘I could donate blood and it would help save someone’s life… but what is plasma going to do for a person?'” said Poettcker. “The difference between blood and plasma – and I am not an expert on this – it’s the uses. Sometimes people will need a full blood transfusion, so they will need blood. But sometimes people only need the plasma. Plasma is a protein in your blood, it has different kinds of purposes. You can have a specific plasma transfusion, if that is what an individual needs. But plasma is also a big product into most medicine. It is able to be used in making medicine we use. It doesn’t have a replacement; it can only be used from human plasma. A lot of times when people are donating, they think it will be helping someone in like a car crash. But when you are donating plasma, you are able to donate ingredients for medicine that may be able to help prolong someone’s life or improve the quality of their life.”

Hoping others will take the lead as these recruits have done for Canadian Blood Services, the Give 3 in 2023 challenge is calling on people across Canada to make three different kinds of contributions to support patients, using three different ways of helping – financial donation, joining the stem cell registry, or volunteering to help recruit blood, plasma, or stem cell donors. For more information on how to help, you can visit 3in2023.blood.ca.

Canadian Blood Services reminds potential donors there are more than 720 open appointments to be filled by Dec. 31 at the Lethbridge plasma donor centre at 3735 Mayor Magrath Drive South.

For Poettcker, the bursary was helpful for furthering her education, but the connections and donors were a bonus to the reward.

“I feel like outside of the bursary program I built a reputation for myself, and it is definitely something I would like to continue doing. It is such a social thing, because you get to sit there for a bit, and I have had so many good experiences taking a couple of my friends. We just sit there and we can catch up for an hour or so, that’s really nice,” said Poettcker. “I feel like I definitely want to keep contributing to the program and love to be able to encourage other people to contribute to the program, even if it isn’t for the bursary program. It is still something really cool that I feel like I can contribute to.”

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