Behind the Scenes of Organ Donation: A Day in the Life of Our Specialist Nurses
What does a typical day look like?
There is no typical day. We may receive several referrals that require assessment or, if there are no referrals, we will undertake audit, teaching sessions, promotion work with the communications team, reviewing policies and pathways, debrief sessions and much more.
When assessing a potential donor, our role involves physical assessment and history taking, family care, undertaking consent for donation, memory making activities, organ offering, coordinating retrieval in the operating theatre, care of the patient after death, the necessary paperwork and phone calls throughout the patient’s donation journey.
It is a privilege to care for patients and families at such a difficult time and to enable people to leave a lasting legacy - the gift of life.
Do you just work in UHS?
Our role is split into two parts – embedded and on-call. On an embedded day we are based in UHS but an on-call shift may see us travelling to any hospital within the South Central region to support the organ donation process through the day and the night. This means that we get to work with lots of different teams and have to remember our way around 17 different hospitals.
Can anyone be an organ donor?
Not many people die in circumstances that make it possible for them to donate their organs. This is why every potential donor is precious.
To be an organ donor after death, the person must be ventilated at the end of their life, which means that most of our patients are cared for in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
When a patient is referred to us, we check the NHS Organ Donor Register (ODR) to see if they have registered a donation decision. We also review their medical history to check whether they have any contraindications to organ donation. If the patient has the potential to help others through donation and has not opted out on the ODR, we then join the medical and nursing teams in speaking with the family about end of life care and ask them to support donation going ahead.
Although you have to be ventilated at the end of life to be an organ donor, many more people can donate tissues after their death. You do not have to be ventilated to be a tissue donor, which means that people who die on the ward, in ED and in a hospice can donate tissues. Tissues that can be donated include eyes, skin, bone, heart valves, tendons, meniscus and blood vessels. One tissue donor, for example, can change and improve the lives of 50 people.
What do you want people to know about organ donation?
9 out of 10 families will support organ donation going ahead if their loved one had confirmed their decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register.
There is some confusion about how our opt-out system works. We would like to clarify a few points:
Your name is NOT automatically on the NHS Organ Donor Register.
If you have not registered a decision (and are not in an excluded group), it is presumed that you have no objection to organ donation and the specialist nurse will ask your family to support this.
It can be very difficult for families when their loved one has not registered a decision and they are now on a ventilator on Intensive Care and their family are not able to ask them what they would want.
The best thing you can do is to register your donation decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register and tell your family.
This will ensure that the specialist nurse can see your donation decision on the register and that your family know what your decision is and can support this.
To find out more and confirm your decision, visit the NHS Organ Donor Register at www.organdonation.nhs.uk. Users of the NHS app, can also use this to record, check or amend their details or decision.