A new approach to organ donation is coming to Royal Columbian Hospital.
In all, five hospitals in B.C. will be hiring organ donor coordinators, with the goal of lowering the number of people who die while waiting for a transplant.
RCH will be among the first three hospitals to have a coordinator on-site, with the other two sites following shortly after, according to Dr. Greg Grant, executive director with B.C. Transplant and a Vancouver-based critical care specialist.
All five coordinators are expected to be in place within six months.
"We've hired for (the spot) in Vancouver General, and we're working on the other two now for Royal Columbian and Kelowna General," said Grant.
He notes that those three sites cover three major health regions, Fraser Health, Vancouver Coastal Health and Interior Health. The other two sites will be named soon.
Grant says the coordinator's role will be to work with a patient's family in situations where organ transplant may be appropriate. The hope, he says, is that the specialized position will help to improve the number of successful transplants through support for families and education.
Grant says that the program is modelled on a similar system in Ontario and has proven highly successful there.
"One of the reasons this kind of program works, when you have nurses and doctors at the bedside, trying to save someone and it's not going to happen, those (care providers) can have a hard time approaching the family - for a lot of medical professionals, it's difficult to go from that life-saving role to (talking about) transplant. They're worried they might be perceived that they're working more for the recipient (of the transplant)," he said.
Having a go-between should help ease those discussions, he says - potentially saving the life of a person on a transplant wait list but also providing something valuable to a family who is losing a loved one.
"It's about the recipients, but it's also about the donor families - a lot of the families who become donor families, it's a real benefit to them, it's very important to them to know that (it helped someone else)," he said. "Organ donation happens because people want something positive to happen out of a terrible situation."
There are currently 22 in-house coordinators in Ontario; based on population, B.C. will have about the same ratio with five coordinators. B.C. Transplant operates under the Provincial Health Services Authority, which will provide the funding for the positions.
Grant says that the organization hopes to encourage people to talk about organ donation with their families and friends.
"You have a much greater chance of needing an organ than of ever being a donor," he said. "Yes, going and signing up is important, but it's also important to have those conversations with your family so they know what your wishes are."
Last year, 25 people in B.C. died while waiting for a transplant; there are currently 393 people on the wait list for various organs.
For more information, see www.transplant.bc.ca
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