Each April, the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP) holds a month-long competition among hospitals in our region to increase awareness of the need for organ and tissue donation and encourage new donor registrations. Recently, Temple Health has dominated the contest: in 2024, we earned first prize in the Top-Performing Health System category for the third year in a row, while Temple University Hospital was named Top-Performing Hospital for the second time in the last three years, and both TUH-Main and Jeanes Campuses received top-level Titanium status.
Achieving these honors means working tirelessly to promote organ donation not just during the month of April, but throughout the entire year. As one of the nation’s leading transplant centers, we perform and facilitate hundreds of lifesaving transplants annually, with more patients going on to organ donation at TUH-Main Campus than at any other hospital in our Gift of Life region.
In fact, we recently had five families say yes to organ donation in one week, with their loved ones’ donations saving the lives of 21 recipients, some of whom were Temple patients. These donors were treated on the Medical Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (MRICU), the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU), and the Neuro ICU, and the staff there went above and beyond to care for them, provide emotional support to their families, and work with Transplant Coordinators from Gift of Life, our regional organ donation partner.
The Most Meaningful Gift
“Our unit alone does more organ donation cases than some hospitals in the city,” says Catelin Sayen, BSN, RN, CCRN, PCCN, Director of Nursing for the MRICU, which handled three of the five donations. Still, she emphasizes, “Our focus is always on treating each patient and helping them get well.”
While it’s the Gift of Life Transplant Coordinators, rather than her staff, who approach families about a potential donation, employees on the MRICU often help loved ones process the decision, and Sayen notes she’s seen it help many families heal. “It’s a way for them to find meaning,” she says. “They know that their loved one’s gift is helping someone else, and that they’re living on and doing good things after they’ve passed.”
The staff also receive updates on the donations, which gives them closure—and hope—as well. “With every patient that goes on to donation, Gift of Life tells us what was successfully transplanted,” says Michelle Hopwood, MSN, RN, Associate Director of Nursing Services for the MRICU. “We’ll learn that the patient’s heart went to a 36-year-old woman, for example, or that their kidney went to a 19-year-old man. Getting that feedback shows us that our work matters, and that the patient’s gift, and their family’s choice, saved so many people who wouldn’t have had a chance otherwise.”
Reaching Staff, Neighbors, and Families
“Promoting organ donation has been important to me since day one,” says Ercele Reyes, BSN, MSN, Clinical Director of the SICU. Like the MRICU, her unit sees a high volume of donors, including two of the five recent donation cases. Reyes is known around the Health System as a pioneer in organ and tissue donation advocacy, prioritizing educating staff and conducting community outreach.
“When residents were in orientation, Dean Amy J. Goldberg, MD, FACS would send them to Gift of Life so they could learn how to have conversations with families,” she says. “I thought, ‘Why not do that with nurses?’ So now I send all my nurses and unit secretaries to the Gift of Life to be trained, and many of the other units, including the MRICU, do the same thing.”
“We’ve also gone to the DMV in Flourtown and Cheltenham and helped people register to be an organ donor on their driver’s license,” Reyes continues. “I put up flyers for in my church and the beauty parlor in my neighborhood for donor registration, too.”
When a patient or family chooses donation on her unit, Reyes and her staff also go to great lengths to honor their gift. “We’ve started to do an Honor Walk, where our team members form a line from their room to the elevator as a way to recognize their loved one, and to show that we know they’re a hero,” Reyes says.
Like other units, the SICU also participates in Gift of Life flag-raisings, where a flag signed by staff, and honoring the donor, is raised in front of the hospital. “We give that flag to the family,” Reyes explains, “and it helps them heal. It’s something for them to hold on to, and they can also look at everyone who’s signed it and see, ‘Oh my goodness, look at all these people who are grateful for my loved one.’”
A Tireless Commitment
“I really believe that Temple goes above and beyond to support every family that has an opportunity for organ donation,” says Liz Lowry, MPH, Key Account Manager and HAP Lead for TUH-Jeanes Campus. “And it’s because of the support of our healthcare team that so many families say yes.”
Lowry has been instrumental not only in our success in the last several HAP contests, but also in promoting organ donation awareness and education across the Health System. In fact, she explains, the work that’s done each April lays the groundwork for our continued success in donation.
“So much of the HAP campaign has to do with teaching Health System employees about the organ donation process,” she says. “And data shows that, if the hospital follows a certain process, families are more likely to say yes to donation. Holding education for the residents, physicians, and nurses; having grand rounds; following up on cases, in terms of what went well and what we could’ve done better: all of that is part of the campaign.”
“At the end of the day, we treat organ donation like we treat everything else at Temple,” Lowry says. “We say, ‘We’re going to get the greatest minds in the room, and we’re going to find ways to support our patients, and to give every family that can donate the absolute best opportunity to do so.’”