Running head: ORGAN DONATION 1

Organ Donation

Nathan Eppich

Brigham Young University – Idaho

NURSE – 422

Linda Ward, Rodney Sanders

September 22nd, 2018

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Organ Donation

Organ donation is one of the greatest advantages of modern medicine to this day. It’s a

complex procedure that includes a team of health care professional that take an organ or tissue

from one individual (the donor) and place it into another individual in need of that organ (the

recipient) (Cleveland clinic). This process is necessary to the recipient’s survival because the

recipient’s organ has failed or been damaged by disease or injury.

The Nurses Rule

The nurse plays a major role in the donation process. One of those critical roles is

referring your potential donor (Tamburri, 2006). In order to do this, the nurse needs to know the

criteria and donation process of the hospital as well as the criteria of the patient and their needs.

This way the nurse can decide whether the patient matches the requirements for donation. Some

of these stipulations include free from cancer, HIV, and systemic infection (U., n.d.). This

process takes collaboration with the Organ Procurement Organization (OPO’s). This nonprofit

organization finds individual’ s that are donating organs for those in need. It is very important for

the nurse to communicate with OPO’s on a regular basis to make sure that they are on the same

page and can process the donation quickly and efficiently.

Patient advocacy is important and extremely valued when it comes to the nursing field

(Tamburri, 2006). The role of an advocate in the donation process is very important because this

is a whole new world for the patient and their family. It’s extremely important for the nurse to be

the line of communication between the collaborative team and express the wishes of the patient.

It mentions in the article, The Role of Critical Care Nurses in the Organ Donation Breakthrough

Collaborative states, “Uphold a family’s right to be offered the option of organ donation.

Promote compassionate communication between the healthcare team and patients’ families.” No
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matter what the situation presents it’s important that the whole collaborative team shoes

compassion towards the patient and their family.

Lastly, it’s important for the nurse to be educated in organ donation as well as

understanding the data that surrounds it (Tamburri, 2006). Just like what was mentioned earlier,

it’s important to be the patient’s advocated which includes educating them. This can be done by

explaining the pros and cons of the procedure, explaining the procedure to them, and last

informing them of the data that correlates with the donation process.

Patient Teaching

To emphasize what was stated in previous paragraphs, there are many important facts to

know about organ donation before actually going through the process of receiving a donation.

The education that is provided should be tailored to the patient needs and questions allowing the

patient to make the best possible decision for their unique circumstance.

One thing that is important for the patient to understand is the potential of organ rejection

and how it happens. It mentions in the article, preventing rejection “Rejection is when the organ

recipient’s immune system recognizes the donor organ as foreign and attempts to eliminate it. It

often occurs when your immune system detects things like bacteria or a virus. Some degree of

rejection occurs with every transplant, but how clinically significant the rejection depends on the

individual.” Though it is scary to think your body can potentially reject the organ it is also

important to understand that the organ transplant team knows the complexity of this process and

how to best manage the rejection (unos). The first step to decreasing the chance of rejection is

making sure that the donor and the recipient both match. This is done first through test called

blood typing in which they draw your blood to make sure you have the same type for blood. If

this comes out positive, then they will move to the tissue test. This test will match the number of
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antigens the donor and recipient share. The best match is to have six out of six matches. Lastly is

the cross-matching test where you will do two blood test on different days to see if the

recipient’s blood will react to the organ being donated (test you need before surgery). The second

way to combat potential rejection is through immunosuppressant medication, these medications

are used to suppress the immune system and keep it from attacking the foreign object (the new

organ). It is also important for the individual to understand the signs and symptoms to look for

that warrant rejections. Those signs are feeling ill or uneasy, decrease in organ function, pain

and swelling, and flu-like symptoms. In order to confirm rejection, the individual needs to get a

x-ray, biopsy, CT scan, etc. to be positive (Martin, 2015).

It is also important for the patient to understand the process that is taken for organ

transplants. The first step is to get a physician’s referral to get evaluated by the transplant

program in order to be deemed a transplant candidate. Secondly, all medical information should

be gathered so it can be looked at before being accepted. Once accepted, the next step is

selecting an appropriate transplant center. This is important because the patient want to find one

that fits their needs, location, insurance compatibility, financial arrangements, etc. The forth step

is to schedule a face to face evaluation appointment to find if the patient is a good candidate for

transplantation. If the transplant team feels that you a good candidate meaning, you don’t have

cancer, HIV, our other systemic infection and you met all their requirements they will contact

you within days in writing to let you know the date and time you were added to the wait list

(organdonor.gov).

Goals and Outcomes

There is a lot of time and effort that goes into organ transplants for the patient as well as

the collaborating team. Receiving an organ from a donor is not an easy task because of the
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thousands of people that are waiting on the waitlist. For this reason, the medical teams focus on a

few goals and outcomes to give the recipients body the best chance to accept the donors organ.

One important goal that is focused on before the surgery occurs is matching the recipient

and the donor to make sure that they are compatible. Putting the patient and donor through

multiple tests like the tissue test, blood test, and cross match before going through with the

transplant allows the doctors to be more confident that patient’s body will accept the organ

(medlineplus). Going through these three tests will provide information on the antigens of both

the donor and the recipient. The closer the antigens are to matching the greater the chance of the

recipient’s immune system accepting the organ (medlineplus). This is why it’s so important the

collaborating team does their best to cross-match before furthering the process of surgery.

The goal and challenge that presents itself after transplantation has been accomplished is

monitoring for signs of rejection by the recipient body. Just like stated above each individual has

antigens within their body that lines the tissue (medlineplus). If the antigens are not a close

enough match, the recipient’s immune system will try to reject the organ. If this is the case than

immunosuppressant therapy will be implemented and depending on the severity of the rejection

will depend on the amount of immunosuppressant drugs given. Single episodes rarely lead to

organ failure. Chronic episodes are much more serious and lead to higher risk for organ failure.

Unfortunately, this type of rejection can’t be treated through medication (medlineplus).

Another goal is to avoid any other complications that are unexpected to organ rejection.

That can be anywhere from cancer, loss of function in the transplanted organ, and systemic

infection (Martin, 2015). Carful monitoring of systemic infection should be the main focus when

it comes to unexpected complication. The reason for this is because the recipient for the organ is

most likely on immunosuppressant therapy medication. When using immunosuppressant

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medication, the body is under a unique circumstance in which the body doesn’t have its usual

defense mechanisms to fight against bacteria and viruses because they are being suppressed in

order for the body to correctly accept the transplanted organ.

Own Personal Beliefs

I personally believe that organ transplantation is a medical advantage that has blessed

thousands of people lives around the world. Through transplantation people have been able to

once again live a normal life and do the things that they were only once able to do. There are

150,000 men and women waiting for an organ transplant today and every 10 min there is another

person that gets added to the waitlist (donatelife).

There are a lot of people in this world that have a lot of hard feeling towards organ

transplants. My opinion is that it’s completely up to the patient and the patient’s family. As long

as the patient understands the full risks, their tests check out and their benefits outweigh the risk

then I see nothing wrong with donating or receiving a donation. The patient who undergoes the

procedure will have to continually be checked and rechecked again to make sure the body is

responding well to the organ as well take immunosuppressant medication to keep their immune

system from attacking the organ. All of this is a lifelong task to handle, so as long as the patient

is willing to accept the challenge than I see nothing wrong with it.

I believe that willingly donating your organs whether your decest or living (kidney) is a

very Christ like thing to do. I was pleased to see that there have been 683,000 transplants since

1988 which shows that they’re a lot of people out that with good morals that want to do good

unto other people. On the other hand, there are 22 people that die each day because they haven’t

received the proper organ in need to save them. 8,000 people die everyday in just the U.S

because of the same reason (donatelife) FACT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. These statistics show
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that even though there are many people out there that are willing to donate, there is still an

unbalanced supply and demand. This shows that this medical line of expertise needs to continue

to grow and advance.

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References THIS ISN’T THE CORRECT WAY TO REFERENCE YOUR ARTICLES

- https://www.donatelife.net/statistics/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyvqa88PR3QIVkbfsCh1s-

wPEEAAYAyAAEgJ-zvD_BwE

- https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000815.htm

- https://www.allinahealth.org/health-conditions-and-treatments/health-library/patient-

education/kidney-transplant/for-the-kidney-donor/tests-you-need-before-surgery/

- https://www.organdonor.gov/about/process/transplant-process.html

- https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/kidney-transplant/about/pac-20384777

- https://transplantliving.org/after-the-transplant/preventing-rejection/

- http://ccn.aacnjournals.org/content/26/2/20.short

- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/11750-organ-donation-and-transplantation