Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) Best Practices & Approaches

Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) Best Practices & Approaches

This course, presented by multidisciplinary experts, will explore key concepts and for building effective DCD processes within partner hospitals, as outlined in the new online Alliance DCD Educational Guide.

Together, we’ll explore 10 essential areas of focus identified by a cross-community collaborative workgroup, including Regulatory Considerations, Donor Identification and Evaluation, the Donation Conversation, Donor Management, Allocation, OR Coordination, Post-DCD Recovery or Non-Recovery Procedures, Pediatric and Neonatal DCD, Quality Improvement and more.

The Alliance is an objective convener and is not an advocacy organization. We are committed to maintaining an objective and unbiased perspective in all of our programs and activities. Alliance programs bring together subject matter experts to share knowledge, experience, and perspectives with the community. The views, opinions, and information expressed by individual presenters, contributors, or participants are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of The Alliance as an organization.

The learning objectives of this course are as follows:

Provide regulatory and legal considerations and historical information about organ donation practices, including DCD, and its impact on the donation and transplantation crisis in the United States.
Define donation-related performance measures
Increase awareness of national, regional, local and specific hospital data measuring DCD performance.
Describe successful processes for potential donor identification, timely OPO notification, and DCD donor management.
Identify the importance of collaborative donation conversations.
Discuss withdrawal of life-sustaining measures in alternative settings to the intensive care setting.
Outline operating room recovery processes.
Describe model practices, such as interdisciplinary donation councils and donor case reviews, to increase collaboration between OPOs, transplant centers, and hospitals.
Provide additional resources for implementing effective DCD donation processes.

Continuing Education credits are no longer available for this learning opportunity.

Certificate of Completion will be provided upon completion

The intention of this meeting is to gather a diverse group of participants from organizations across the country to engage in collaborative, valuable and productive discussion. Attendance is strongly recommended for, but not limited to:

Senior OPO and Transplant Leaders
Medical Directors
Transplant Surgeons & Physicians
Clinical Operations Leaders
Legal & Ethics Leaders
Critical Care Physicians & Leaders
Industry Partners

January 8, 2026 – “I thought the variety of perspectives and the variety of subject matters in the presentations provided an excellent multidimensional understanding of the DCD process and it’s importance to the industry.”

Charles Harrison

January 5, 2026 – “Learning the different ways and opportunities to approach family and more about the DCD process how other OPO’s do them.”

October 12, 2025 – Donation conversation portion was interesting. Also the usage of machine perfusion extending the DCD donor pool further than ever before as the DCD:BD ratio continues to even out.

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