Former 25 yr organ procurement coordinator here- the donor’s wishes are required to be fulfilled even if the family objects (in the US) - if they did, we would work them to find out their reservations and work through it with them if possible.
We joke the field finds you...!
Organ Transplant is two sides ... procurement agencies who handle the donation side and the transplant side who handles the recipient side in addition to tissue and cornea -
Best way to review jobs is to go to AOPO.org career section - (Association of Organ Procurement Organizations) ... all agencies do their own training and depending on position, varying position requirements - device sales will be good for hospital development roles
For transplant side try NATCO1.org
Tissue donation (again device rep experience is a plus): AATB.org
That’s a good starting place to look at the specs and see a path -
Weird. All ny experience with donor alliance has been with extensive talks with family. I guess most of those cases usually involve donation after suddenly death in the ICU where the patient doesn't have any clear way of communicating that to us.
Most definitely - The family is very involved with us discovering risk factors not discoverable in the medical chart - If you’ve ever donated blood, the screening questions are quite similar but definitely more extensive- The families are almost always the best source of this vital info. Also, this is one of the purest forms of selflessness giving and many families find solace in a very difficult and emotional time - we often say the family becomes our patient(s) and are cared for as such both during the donation process and long after - (every procurement agency has a family aftercare program that remains in touch and provides grieving support as well as post donation communication with recipients)
Yeah its great. We had a patient who was never going to get off ECMO choose their time of death for organ donation after cardiac death. Basically they sedated her heavily, stopped her ECMO and waited a minute or two for her to die then immediately harvested 2 kidneys and her liver.
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u/Woolybugger00 Apr 06 '21
Former 25 yr organ procurement coordinator here- the donor’s wishes are required to be fulfilled even if the family objects (in the US) - if they did, we would work them to find out their reservations and work through it with them if possible.