Episode 63: How Does A Family Aftercare Coordinator Help Donor Families? With Katie Wright

This Thing Called Life

On this episode of This Thing Called Life, host Andi Johnson continues the series on ‘The Donation Process Through The Lens Of The OPO’, exploring how things work and who is involved. If you missed the previous episode in the series, you can find them at lifepassiton.org or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Today, Andi talks with Katie Wright, a family aftercare coordinator with Life Center. . Tune in to hear her personal connection to the organization as well as her career path.

Episode Highlights:

• Katie, a family aftercare coordinator introduces herself. She has been with Life Center for nine years.

• Andi asks Katie what led her to begin working at Life Center; She shares that her brother was waiting on the transplant list and ended up passing away while he was waiting. He went on to be a tissue donor. He was young at 32.

• Katie used to work in the communication department and she actually started up the aftercare department when Life Center wanted to make a bigger support system for donor families.

• What exactly does aftercare do?

• Katie talks about outcome letters which thanks families and explains what they know about what their gifts and how they helped.

• What is the communication process between recipient and donor family?

• “Every recipient and every donor family handles their grief and their survivor's guilt and medical bumps in the road differently”, says Katie. She explains that some families want the letter and sometimes they don’t. Their department balances that to meet the needs of what people want and need.

• Andi asks Katie to talk about how Aftercare helps in bereavement.

• Katie talks about events and live streaming to reach families and give opportunities for them to connect with other families.

• Andi shares her perspective on families interacting with each other as she has seen it play out.

• Families receive a memorial gift from Life Center too to celebrate and remember their family members.

• What is the Donor Family Council?

• Andi asks Katie to share how her family personally remembers her brother.

• Katie and Andi talk about The Path Of Life located in a local park, Mt. Echo. Families receive ribbons of remembrance to tie on trees if they choose.

• Andi asks Katie what the most rewarding part of working at Life Center is.
• There are many people struggling with grief; Andi says lifepassiton.org has a lot of resources and encourages checking it out.

3 Key Points:

1. How does the Family Aftercare Department contribute to the value chain of organ, eye, and tissue donation? Andi and Katie discuss what they do and how it impacts lives.
2. Katie’s personal experience with her brother being a tissue donor at 32 after passing away waiting on the organ transplant list which prepared her to be the one who actually helped start up the aftercare department which Life Center specifically created to provide more comprehensive care and support for donor families.
3. Recipients and donor families sometimes do want contact and others do not. The aftercare department helps facilitate the communications if/when it is appropriate to meet everybody’s needs.

Resources:

• https://aopo.org/
• https://lifepassiton.org/
• https://www.facebook.com/LifeCenterOH
• https://www.youtube.com/user/LifeCenterOH