Shands Jacksonville and Shands at the University of Florida academic medical centers have received medals of honor from the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) for their success in increasing organ-donation rates at their hospitals.
HRSA, the federal agency that oversees organ-donation activities, presents the awards to hospitals that reach and maintain 75-percent organ-donation rates for eligible donors. In 2003, the agency established the National Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative to help hospitals reach this goal by bringing together donation professionals and hospital leaders to identify and share best practices for organ donation. In four years, the number of hospitals that have achieved a 75-percent rate has soared from 55 to 392.
Shands Jacksonville and Shands at UF surpassed this national goal by achieving donation rates of 80 percent or greater and have received medals of honor for three consecutive years.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled about these awards because only 108 hospitals in the country have received a medal of honor three times,” said Kristin Jimenez, hospital services coordinator at LifeQuest, the organ procurement organization that services Florida hospitals from Citrus County north.
HRSA established the 75-percent donation-rate goal based on a survey that showed three-quarters of Americans would be willing to donate a loved one’s organs. In 2004, Shands Jacksonville and Shands at UF had donation rates at or just below 50 percent. The first year after implementing some of the collaborative’s best practices, the hospitals’ rates jumped to 75 percent and have been steadily increasing ever since.
Jimenez said the hospitals have made concerted efforts to integrate organ donation into their end-of-life continuum of care and create family-centered donation programs. This involved a variety of approaches, from educating hospital leaders to standardizing nursing forms. One of the major initiatives was to identify staff members, called clinical champions, who educate their peers about the organ-donation process and dispel myths.
“Increasing awareness at the staff-nurse level has been key to our success, because our bedside nurses are the people who make this happen,” said Medical Intensive Care Unit Nurse Manager Sandy Shaw, who is a clinical champion at Shands at UF. “They are the ones who identify potential donors and make the call to LifeQuest. If they don’t make that first call, then the opportunity is lost for families to consider making this life-saving gift.”
Once a potential donor is identified, a LifeQuest coordinator works with the medical team to confirm that the donor meets national eligibility requirements and to determine if it is appropriate to approach the family. To further improve the organ-donation process, Shands and LifeQuest staff who work with donor families now receive special training about how and when to discuss the donation option.
“At Shands Jacksonville, we set up an office on site for our LifeQuest partners. This has helped us raise awareness about the importance of organ donation and improved the relationship between our medial teams and their coordinators,” said Cynthia Gerdik, director of Trauma Surgical Services and clinical champion at Shands Jacksonville. “Very few hospitals have that level of collaboration. We’re very proud of our success.”
Another change has been to provide timely feedback to staff. Nurses, physicians and social workers who identify donors whose organs are successfully recovered will receive a follow-up letter thanking them for their efforts and letting them know how many lives were saved by the donation.
“These improvements speak volumes about Shands HealthCare’s commitment to its donor families and the 98,000 people across the country who are on transplant waiting lists,” Jimenez said.