“I hereby authorize xxx, my patient, to donate plasma up to two times per week.”
I moved to Cleveland over the summer to start work as a full-time primary care internist. Within a few weeks, I started receiving a form in my mailbox that I had never seen during my training in San Francisco: an authorization request for my patients to donate their plasma.
By the time the fourth form came, I realized that plasma donation was more than an altruistic fad that happened over Cleveland summers. What I eventually learned was that our patients line up for hours, twice a week, to trade their time and plasma for money. The money — $20 per session — is used to pay rent or bills. The plasma is used to create expensive biologic intravenous medications like IVIG and clotting factors.
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