Past Hospital Highlights

Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center

To promote National Donate Life month, Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, in partnership with New England Donor Services, hosted the wife of a donor at their hospital this past April.  Their organization received a Platinum Award for its efforts to increase donor awareness and registration within the community and with its employees.

Leanne DiMaio, who lives in Massachusetts, was vacationing with her husband Nicholas in Maine when he suffered a non-survivable stroke.  Leanne’s remarkable journey to honor her husband’s wish to donate resonated with staff as she relayed how positive things could come out of a tragedy.  Leanne made the trek back to Bangor to thank the staff involved in her husband’s care.  Because NL-EMMC is not a designated transplant center, staff don’t typically have the opportunity to interact with donor families or recipients after a recovery is performed at their facility.  Leanne was able to reconnect with Dr. Waterman, the Neurosurgeon who initially cared for her husband upon his arrival to the Emergency Department, and Jason Bishop, Respiratory Therapist, who maintained her husband’s oxygen levels while waiting for the recovery to be coordinated, along with many other nursing and support staff members.

Leanne shared that the care her family and husband received was extraordinary, and is comforted in knowing that her husband’s gifts will have a remarkable impact on others moving forward.

Massachusetts General Hospital

Massachusetts General Hospital staff recently collaborated with New England Donor Services to develop, design and install a donor memorial in a high-visibility area of the hospital. The purpose of the Memorial is to pay enduring tribute to the patients and families who have made the difficult and courageous decision to save and improve lives through organ and tissue donation.

Kate Sparks, a ten year Neuro ICU Nurse and graduate of the NEDS Donor Champion Program, after seeing examples of donor memorials all around New England during the Champion Program thought, “why doesn’t MGH have one?” Kate reached out to Kevin Kiely, NEDS In-house Hospital Relations Coordinator and her RN Director Tara Tehan and Associate Chief Nurse Sue Algeri. Kate along with Neuro ICU Clinical Nursing Supervisor, Mary Guanci worked together with Transplant Administrator Paul Myoung and members of the MGH community to develop the concept and identify the proper location in which the memorial can reside. The design was proposed to the MGH Executive Donation Committee in which there was universal support.

One of the most important aspects of the Donor Memorial was that it represent many of the concepts the workgroup and Committee considered important: legacy, life, gift, renewal, generosity, gratitude, appreciation, thanks and of course be reflective of the diverse community served by the MGH. The image of the Celtic Tree of Life, and the many languages seen in the branches and root system, were vital in conveying these messages. As Kate Sparks said “It’s important that when you look at this Memorial, it is immediately obvious what it is all about.”

The Memorial is in its final stages of fabrication and there is a tentative plan to unveil and dedicate it during a ceremony to be held on April 30, 2019.

UMass Memorial Medical Center (UMMMC), University Campus

New England Donor Services staff, in collaboration with staff from UMMMC, University Campus, worked together in 2018 to implement routine “connect to purpose” events with donor families and recipients during hospital registration drives and other ongoing donation education. The goal for these events is focused on increasing the number of registered donors and overall hospital authorization rate. UMMMC’s overall authorization rate so far in 2018 is up by 20% from CY 2017 and currently has the highest authorization rate among all NEDS hospitals at 86%. In addition, University Campus was recently one of a select number of hospitals nationwide to receive the Platinum Level of recognition for promoting enrollment in the state organ donor registry through HRSA’s Workplace Partnership for Life Hospital Campaign (WPFL). Over the past six years, UMMMC, University Campus, has received the platinum certificate, the highest level of WPFL recognition.

The Annual Gift of Life celebration, hosted by UMMMC Transplant and Hospital Administration (pictured here) is held each December. Nearly 200 participants, including UMass kidney, liver, and pancreas recipients are joined by their families, friends, and staff who worked hard to make these miracles happen. NEDS’ staff, volunteers, and donor family guest speakers participate in the event planning, festivities, presentations, and hosting a donation/registration table.

For more information on the WPFL campaign, click here.

Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center

New England Donor Services collaborated with Summer Interns from the Violence and Injury Prevention Program/Trauma Department at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center (Hartford, CT) this July to “ECHO” the importance of donation and transplantation in multicultural communities.  The collaboration began with an in-service on Organ, Eye and Tissue Donation provided by New England Donor Services and a Volunteer Recipient.  The interns were then provided a list of general questions on donation and transplantation and asked to interview and film people within their own communities i.e. local, family, church etc…  Videos were filmed with use of their cellphones only.   Those films were then shared with the group and pieced into a 1 minute video that was submitted to the ECHO video contest created by Donate Life America and the Association for Multicultural Affairs in Transplantation. ECHO stands for Every Community Has Opportunity….to save and heal lives through donation and transplantation.  Video entries had to embody the theme “Donate Life Caregiving”.  Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center’s video entry was entitled “Care, Community and Educate”.

For the 2^nd year in a row, Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center was awarded 3^rd place in the country!!!  A trophy was provided to both NEDS and the hospital for this accomplishment.  Donate Life America commented on what an awesome and energetic group of interns they were and how much they loved the interns perspective on being caregivers to their own local community by educating them about donation. The video was posted to the Donate Life America and AMAT Facebook pages, as well as, shown in other presentations within the hospital.

Special thanks and congratulations to Marisol Feliciano, Violence and Injury Prevention Program Coordinator, Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, all of the Summer Interns, Jane Andrews and the Trauma Department for this amazing collaboration!

Yale New Haven Hospital

New England Donor Services and Yale-New Haven Hospital’s transplant center recently collaborated to host the presentation, “Why I Said YES to Donation.”  The presentation was attended by a multi-disciplinary audience that included nurses, social workers, chaplains, and senior administrators from both NEDS and YNHH.

The symbol of ‘the ripple effect from one drop of water’ was used to depict the effect one donor has on the lives of so many people – the donor family, the recipients, and their family and friends.

The presentation was held in April in honor of Donate Life Month and focused on why individuals and family members agree to organ donation, both through living-related and deceased donation. Guest speakers included two altruistic living organ donors who donated their organs to individuals in need, and four donor family members. Each of the donor family members spoke about their decision to donate their loved one’s organs and the impact that donation has had on their individual families, as well as on the lives of the recipients.

Two of the family members shared their experience of meeting the recipients. They described how they now have a relationship with not only the recipients, but also with their families. They spoke about attending wedding celebrations too!

Hospital staff in attendance described the presentation as one that they will not forget, stating that, “it completed the circle, from death to donation, to the positive effect on the lives of the transplant recipients.”

NEDS looks forward to collaborating with Yale-New Haven Transplant Center staff in presenting this program again for years to come.

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

In the spring of 2017, NEDS initiated a collaboration effort to improve donation outcomes with critical care nurses and nursing management at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. As a result of this collaboration, a recurring bi-monthly educational series on a variety of donation topics was implemented. The program included continuing education credits for nurses in attendance.

The goal of the series was to increase knowledge of donation-related processes and understanding of the different roles of NEDS and hospital staff during donation events.  In order to identify topics of interest, a survey was sent to the nursing staff. This assisted to identify the general of the staff and prioritization of lecture topics.

The education series opened with “Care of the Donor Patient.” In order to ensure that the largest number of nursing staff were able to participate, as well as to garner enthusiasm for the bi-monthly series, NEDS offered the first session during critical care nursing staff meetings. To date, three presentations have been held, the most recent being “Organ Donation After Circulatory Death.”