Blood types

After Dave's email I did a bit of research on the net in regard to blood types. This is what I found:

Most people did agree that the easiest way to find out your blood group is to volunteer to be a blood donor. As a part of the routine screening process your blood type will be determined and recorded upon your donor card.
See the website www.blood.co.uk for more details. What you need to do is to answer their questions on their website to check that you are eligible and find out where they are taking blood near you - just type in your postcode. However here is the downside

• You may not be happy giving blood - fear of needles, bad previous experience,
  
• You might not be able to give blood - not heavy enough (like me - need to be over 7 st 12), not old enough (ally - need to be 17) or you don't meet other conditions - and if that is so the organisation won't screen you just to give out blood types for a trip (you have to give blood)

So I rang the organisation to ask them and they said that your GP should be able to take a blood sample, no problem. However I then rang my GP who agreed with what David said - that the doctors didn't have a specific test to obtain blood type - it was actually just tests to determine other things in the blood. They recommended calling the Pathology unit of your local hospital (for Hillingdon its 01895 279285) and see if they will do it . If they won't then the last resort would be to look to do it privately or just to not have it done at all.

Hope that answers any questions you might have. Let me know if anyone continues to have problems getting this done.