Dateline DFCI
Kraft Family Blood Donor Center enjoys new space offering more privacy, comfort, and light
When Ed Wiederhold came to Dana-Farber in June to donate platelets for the 71st time, he didn't follow his normal route.
Kenneth Anderson, MD
Instead of heading to the windowless and somewhat noisy former home of the Kraft Family Blood Donor Center on the lower level of the Charles A. Dana Building, he made his way to the Jimmy Fund Building. There, on the first floor, he entered the Kraft Center's bright, new space, had his vital signs taken in a private interview room, and settled into a brand-new reclining chair for the 90-minute procedure.
"It's beautiful," the 43-year-old Wiederhold said of the donor center's refurbished home as the video he'd chosen played from a bank of screens overhead. "It's bigger and more modern, and the chairs are more comfortable."
The spacious center has been renamed the Kraft Family Blood Donor Center of the Joint Program in Transfusion Medicine, as it now handles platelet collections previously done at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Center leaders hope the combined facility will eventually collect 7,000 bags of platelets — the fragile blood components given to patients whose supply may be low from their disease and treatment — each year to meet the hospitals' needs.
Medical technologist Melissa O'Dowd, MT, checks on the status of Charles Ingersoll's 35th platelet donation.
Among the improvements are an attractive waiting area, additional beds for patients and others giving lymphocytes or stem cells, more platelet donor chairs, and sizable windows. Kraft Center staff members, meanwhile, are enjoying a larger work station for nurses and technicians, more storage space, better air flow, and brighter offices. One of the biggest changes is the drop in noise level, thanks to the additional TV monitors and headsets for each viewer.
Says center Medical Director Kenneth Anderson, MD, "This new state-of-the-art center is making the process of giving much more pleasant for our donors and allows for the development and testing of more specialized, cellular-based treatment protocols to improve outcomes for our patients."
