Transplant patients seek to share more than organs
Organ recipients increasingly want contact with donor families.
By Andis Robeznieks, amednews staff. June 14, 2004.
Physicians know that patient privacy must be protected at all costs, but there is one area where increasing numbers of patients and families are sharing their personal information with strangers: organ donation.
No national figures are kept, but officials with organ procurement organizations across the country say they increasingly are being asked to facilitate meetings between transplant recipients and families of deceased organ donors. They also report that most of the meetings are beneficial and help the healing process on both sides of the transplant equation.
"It's just multiplied tremendously," said Maggie Coolican, a nurse and donor family services coordinator at LifeChoice Donor Services in Windsor, Conn. "I know we've had at least four times as many meetings as we had here 10 years ago."
Face-to-face meetings are still rare, equaling about one to five a year for most organ procurement organizations, but Pam Silvestri, public affairs director for the Dallas-based Southwest Transplant Alliance, said her group might take part in 30 to 50 such meetings a year -- double what they were experiencing 10 years ago.
Pam Albert, a nurse and director of donor family services for the Newton, Mass.-based New England Organ Bank, said keeping people apart was the result of antiquated thinking.
"It was felt that a meeting was more than either side could bear," she said. "I think sometimes in medicine we get paternalistic and think we always know what's best for patients."
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