Blood Donation Camp Site Assessment Checklist

Before you approve an off-site blood donation camp, walk through the venue and verify the donor route, privacy, hygiene, team, equipment, emergency arrangements, identification controls and return transport.¹² If the site cannot support confidential donor selection, emergency response or a traceable return to your centre, do not dispatch the collection team.

Keep this site assessment separate from the blood donation camp documentation trail. The assessment decides whether you can use the venue. Donor, collection and handover records document what happened after you approved it.

Approve the site before you dispatch anything

Rule 122G makes adequate staff, plant and premises, along with the records specified in Schedule F Part XIIB, conditions of the blood centre licence.³ Moving collection to a temporary venue does not move responsibility away from the licensed centre.¹

Give the organiser the practical blood donation camp hosting requirements before your visit, then verify them physically. An emailed assurance that the hall is spacious or that power will be available is not a completed assessment.

Record one outcome: approved, conditionally approved or refused. Conditional approval is suitable only for a correctable gap with an owner, deadline and closure evidence before dispatch. Treat missing privacy, emergency readiness or controlled return as reasons to withhold approval.¹²

Walk the route in the order a donor will use it

Start at the entrance and walk through registration, confidential selection, collection, post-donation observation and refreshments, and exit. The NBTC camp provisions require the venue and arrangements to support these functions, rather than treating the camp as one undivided queue in a hall.¹

1. Registration: Place the desk where waiting donors do not obstruct entry, emergency access or the confidential selection area.
2. Confidential selection: Check both visual and conversational privacy. Stand in the waiting area and test whether you can hear the interview.
3. Collection: Confirm sufficient working space around each couch, clean surfaces, lighting and access to supplies without crossing the donor queue.
4. Observation and refreshments: Keep the area visible to the responsible team while separating it from active collection.
5. Exit: Give donors a clear route that does not pass through confidential records, collected units or waste holding points.

A single-room venue may need partitions, controlled entry and staggered movement. Test the actual arrangement instead of accepting a floor plan. Volunteers may guide queues, but your authorised team should retain control of donor selection, confidential information and collection records.²

Check the people, equipment and fallback plan

Team readiness

Prepare a roster naming the camp in-charge, medical officer, collection staff, technical and support staff, and the person responsible for return custody. Match the team and physical capacity to the expected turnout, and verify the competency or authorisation required by your centre’s procedures.¹²

Write down who takes over during breaks and who contacts the receiving centre if the camp runs late. The organiser’s volunteers should have defined tasks, particularly where they can see registration information.

Equipment and supplies

Use a pre-departure issue sheet instead of packing from memory. The list should cover donor examination and screening equipment, collection equipment, blood bags, tubes, kits and reagents, labels, emergency supplies, sharps and waste containers, forms or devices, and the return transport arrangement.¹²⁴

• Check equipment identity, functional status and calibration or verification status where applicable.
• Record the quantity, lot or batch and expiry details required by your procedure for bags, kits and reagents.
• Confirm power points and the approved fallback for equipment that depends on electricity.
• Open and inspect the emergency kit against your centre-approved checklist. Do not rely on an intact outer seal alone.
• Test the printer, scanner, tablet or laptop at the venue, including charging and connectivity.
• Carry controlled paper forms and an identifier procedure for the approved offline fallback.
• Check the transport container, monitoring device, vehicle and named person who will accept custody.

Run one dry identity check before collection starts. The donor record, bag, sample and any temporary worksheet must carry the same unique link, with no handwritten shortcut that creates a second numbering system.²

Contingencies

Your site-assessment form should identify what the team will do if power or connectivity fails, turnout exceeds safe capacity, the return vehicle is delayed, an emergency occurs or transport conditions cannot be demonstrated. Assign the decision to a named role and use the centre’s approved procedure.²

A network failure may be manageable through a controlled offline process. Improvised identifiers are not. Stop and escalate whenever the fallback cannot preserve the donor-to-unit-to-sample link.

Separate pre-approval records from camp records

The easiest way to find a missing document is to assign it to the stage at which someone must complete it.

Schedule F Part XIIB Section L lists the blood donor record, master records, blood-bag records, diagnostic kit and reagent records, and records for disposables among the records a licensee must maintain. Its closing note requires the listed records to be kept for five years and does not name a start-date trigger.⁴ Your site-assessment form is additional quality evidence, not a replacement for those Schedule F blood centre records.

Record a deferred donor through your centre’s donor deferral process, including the outcome needed when that person returns. Do not place the reason on an organiser’s attendance list or share confidential selection information with volunteers.²

Use two final sign-offs

Before the team leaves the blood centre

• Approved site-assessment form available to the camp in-charge
• Every conditional approval item closed and signed
• Team roster, organiser contact and escalation contacts confirmed
• Equipment status and emergency kit check completed
• Supplies, forms and identifiers issued and counted
• Offline fallback and return transport confirmed

Before the team leaves the venue

• Every registration assigned an outcome
• Every collected unit matched with its donor record and samples
• Unused, spoiled and cancelled identifiers accounted for
• Reactions, deviations and unresolved discrepancies handed over
• Units, samples, forms and equipment counted by both sides of the custody handover
• Waste and borrowed venue items accounted for

If one count does not match, open the discrepancy while the team and records are still together. A signed handover should show who transferred custody, who received it and what was included.²

If your centre uses RAKT camp management, create the camp before dispatch and close it only after the return counts reconcile. A status on screen cannot rescue a missing donor record, an unaccounted identifier or a handover nobody signed.

Sources

1. National Blood Transfusion Council, Standards for Blood Banks and Blood Transfusion Services, provisions on blood donation camps no public URL
2. NABH Accreditation Standards for Blood Centres nabh.co
3. Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, Rule 122G cdsco.gov.in
4. Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, Schedule F Part XIIB, Section L cdsco.gov.in