The Alliance Conversation Series brings you cost-free, fast-paced collaborative opportunities that highlight successful donation and transplantation practices across the country. Through shared insight, multidisciplinary experts identify solutions to critical challenges affecting the community of practice and actively share them for open discussion and broader knowledge of effective practices.

The sessions encourage real-time feedback and participation from viewers.

Overview: This session will highlight a real-life case scenario that illustrates how volatile a donation conversation can get when there is a lack of trust, comfortability, and familiarity between healthcare professionals and the patients they serve. We will explore practical strategies for facilitating a more appropriate and culturally sensitive approach to these conversations throughout this discussion.

Case Overview: The case highlights the unfortunate and untimely death of an infant boy of Hispanic and Black descent. Emotions were high, and the dynamics between the various family members involved were tense. His parents were no longer romantically involved, and the mother was in a relationship with someone else. When the child sustained his injuries, he was in the care of his mother’s boyfriend. As a result, accusations were made, and it was shared that there was an active police investigation underway to evaluate the nature of the patient’s injuries. The clinical team eventually pronounced the child brain dead and shared the prognosis with his family. Following that discussion, the hospital transitioned the case to the OPO team to initiate the next steps for potential donation. The OPO Donation Advocate, Mom, Dad, and the primary nurse caring for the patient were involved in the donation discussion.

Added Learning Opportunity (optional) We encourage you to continue with us for an optional 30-minute Breakout Session that will take place following this session at 3pm ET/2pm CT/ 1pm MT/12 pm PT. These breakout discussions will serve as a value opportunity to connect with your peers in the community in small, collaborative groups and apply lessons learned from the general session. Following the breakout session, we will reconvene with our speakers to share key insights and strategies identified. The areas of focus for this session include:

• How can the hospital team re-center after actual or potential threats of violence are made by potential donor families? How do we reconcile our personal beliefs of appropriate grieving with what we actually are seeing in a given situation?
• Based upon this case study, what are some potential after-action review plans of correction that you might want to implement at your institution?