Organ donation campaign urges you to make plans now
The worst time to decide whether or not to donate a family member’s organs is when that person is in the hospital and the decision is imminent.
A new public service campaign aims to reduce the number of families who are left in that painful situation by increasing the number of registered organ donors.
Rapid City Regional Hospital has partnered with LifeSource, the organ and tissue procurement organization in the upper Midwest, for Donate Life Black Hills, a campaign that features local nurses sharing their commitment to organ and tissue donation.
“It’s so hard emotionally to make the decision. To give the families that additional support by making the decision now helps everyone,” said Pamela Stillman-Rokusek, media relations coordinator for the hospital.
The main goal of the campaign is to help families through a difficult time by helping alleviate any confusion of their loved one’s wishes.
“It is such a huge help for families to know unequivocally this is what my loved one wanted,” said registered nurse and project coordinator Shaye Krcil.
Krcil said that the hospital’s No. 1 priority is always to save the patient’s life. However, when that is not possible and a patient is declared brain dead, then the family is faced with the difficult task of choosing whether or not to donate a loved one’s organs.
“It’s a very personal decision for every family,” said Wendy Asher, nurse practitioner and project member.
Periodically, a core group at Rapid City Regional Hospital meets to discuss organ donations. More than a year ago, the committee reviewed statistics for those who have signed up to be organ donors. Committee members noticed the local number was lower than the national level and the state level, and, in fact, had become stagnant, Krcil said.
At that time, the Black Hills area’s organ donor designation rate, or percentage of those who had signed up to donate, was about 41 percent, below the national average of 51 percent and the state average of 47 percent.
Because of the stagnant numbers, the committee, which is made up of nurses from departments that work primarily with organ donations, including the intensive care unit, pediatrics and the hospital coordinators, decided it was time to take a proactive approach. The committee worked with the hospital’s public relations department to design the entire campaign, from the print ads to the television commercials.
The group didn’t set specific goals for increasing donors.
“Personally, at least I’d like to get the state average at the minimum,” Krcil said.
The campaign, which began June 7, consists of three phases: advertisements, a workplace initiative where volunteers will go into businesses to talk with employees about donation, and volunteer visits to local events such as the Zonta Expo, Black Hills Stock Show and Rapid City Rush hockey games to distribute information and facts on organ donation.
The campaign is funded by a federal grant from the Division of Transplantation, Health Resources and Services Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. The grant paid for all costs associated with the campaign; no money from the Rapid City Regional Hospital was used.
In addition, the volunteers trained with the staff at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV now has posters and brochures to help bring awareness to organ donation and to increase the number of people who choose to donate.
Some of the volunteers who will be speaking to businesses and at public events will be family members of organ donors.
“The cool thing about the project is some of the most energetic vocal supporters are families of donors,” Asher said.
Part of the public relations campaign is designed to address the misconceptions that prevent people from donating. Some, for instance, believe that their religion prevents donation, they won’t be able to have an open casket or that organ donation costs more.
“All of these are myths,” Krcil said.
The group has sent out a survey to find out if there are any additional barriers to donation. Krcil said after the data is collected and reviewed, they can look at modifications to the campaign to address concerns.
More than 2,800 people in the upper Midwest region currently are waiting for an organ transplant. One donor can help up to 60 people. According to Rebecca Ousley of LifeSource, about 110 transplant recipients are currently living in the Black Hills area.
Rapid City Regional Hospital is not a transplant facility. Sioux Falls and Denver are the two closest facilities.
“We are not a transplant center. We don’t directly benefit from (the marketing campaign). It’s for those families out there that we are doing this,” Asher said.
The entire project is has been spearheaded by the Regional nurses, Stillman-Rokusek said. They organized it, developed the promotions, trained the volunteers and starred in the ads.
“The nurses involved in the campaign are terrific,” she said. “They have given of their personal time to work on this project. They’re very excited about it.”
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