Here’s What Happened at Our Best Practices Summit for Donor Family Services and Aftercare

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Did you get a chance to attend our Best Practices Summit via Zoom on June 18, 2020? If not, you missed a great time with a lot of insights that were shared by folks from many OPOs across the country. But don’t fret, because we captured the whole event in the video below!

We started off with a meta-analysis from Sean Jordan at the Research & Planning Group (RPG) which talked about what it means for donor families to feel appreciated and what their most commonly-cited opportunities for improvement are. RPG’s analysis included 9 recent OPO studies with a total of 1268 donor family interviews.

The analysis found that many donor families feel strongly connected to the mission and purpose of donation, often because they have had such a great experience in being served by the OPO’s family services and aftercare teams!

Some of the key words and phrases for feeling valued or appreciated include:

  • Help others
  • Save lives
  • Supportive
  • Helpful
  • Positive attitude
  • Appreciation
  • Kindness
  • Compassion
  • Respect
  • Good people
  • Care
  • Lasting legacy

While around two in three donor families say they can’t think of ways that the donation process can be improved (often because they had such a positive experience themselves), the data suggest there are many areas in which OPOs can focus to ensure that their interactions with donor families go smoothly.

The chief pain points for affected donor families include:

  • Lack of follow-up regarding placement of donations and contact with recipients
  • Lack of concern for their feelings throughout the process due to rushed communication
  • Being properly prepared for the DRAI (particularly during late nights and for tissue donor families)
  • Access to aftercare services and events, which donor families are not always aware of or able to utilize

We had speakers from seven different OPOs share their journey and challenges in dealing with the changing context of COVID-19. These individuals included:

(You can click on the links for each presenter above to see their presentation. Please contact us if you would like to know how to get in touch with any of these folks.)

Afterwards, we moved into a breakout session and got eight really great discussions going as folks from around the country talked about what they’ll be doing next. Here’s a list of the ideas they mentioned in our chat exercise towards the end!

What ideas we’ll be taking back to our OPOs

  • Explore see through masks, is now the time we could explore extubating in PACU, we are not currently meeting families in public spaces-could explore
  • We’re all moving our donor family ceremony’s to a virtual setting.
  • A person in our group reminded up to be kind to ourselves. Wise words!
  • The Donor Medal Ceremony
  • I love the idea of supporting staff through yoga/mediation, an in-house support counselor for staff separate from an EAP (shoutout to LOPA for this great idea!), and Welcome Back bags for staff (with wipes, sanitizer, Donate Life mask).
  • Formalizing and putting together a structure for family care communication plan for follow up.
  • Finger prints for jewelry and clay thumbprints
  • What Your Grief online Resources and Webinars, Families are requesting more information and craving additional follow up. Covid has taught us just how important our follow up services are.
  • We give the tissue pediatric families a memory box with a candle and card.
  • We are in the process of putting bags together that would include things like contact solution/cases, deodorant, dry shampoo, the comfort shawl, toothbrush/toothpaste, etc. We would put our family guide book in there and the memory making items. It’s a work in progress!

What changes we feel are here to stay

  • “Hungry for hope” – I love that expression.
  • Connecting with both coworkers and families digitally!
  • Working more from home. More Zoom meetings with families.
  • Virtual meetings
  • Podcasts to increase confidence in phone approaches
  • Crisis and technology fatigue
  • Visitation Restrictions in the ICU is likely here to stay for a while.
  • Utilizing technology to meet employee and donor family needs.
  • Working remotely is going to be common practice. Zoom meetings will be our forever normal.
  • Creativity and more adaptability.  Being able to look outside of the box to meet families where they are.
  • Virtual work
  • Earlier DCD approaches via phone when family not on site
  • Connecting with our Team and finding new ways to support our FS Coordinators so are able to shine in their roles!
  • Working from home
  • Thinking out of the box/creativity!
  • Additional outlets for support and counseling. not only for families but also for staff to support this incredible work we do
  • We have to be ready for continued changes and realize this is our new norm….Self care for our selves so we do not experience burn out!
  • I definitely think we’ve seen the benefit of virtual support for donor families. It’s been an incredible way to support families further out in our DSA. Even when we go back to the office, I think we’ll continue to support our families virtually as often as we can
  • Will need extensive phone approach training/HS more work with medical staff
  • Willingness to not a bound by how we have always done things
  • Hospital visitation restrictions in units
  • Increased need for after care counseling/ bereavement services for families.. due to home stressors piled on with the loss of a loved one.
  • Working remotely and connecting with families during the changes
  • Working from home more.  Families needing more resources online
  • Increased training for phone approaches and streamlining our work with hospitals to increase efficiency
  • Virtual hugs; bows? new ways to support our families and showing affection and compassion. more emphasis on body language
  • “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” is an old saying, but never more true than all the amazing new ways OPO staff are finding to do things.

Summary of Aftercare Breakout Sessions

Group A: A similar theme we were all discussing was communication. How important it is for communication in our teams and communication with our families. We discussed weekly updates with staff about what was happening with our building and memorials, etc. We discussed tailoring to the needs of our families, connecting with them by phone or virtual platforms. We’ve noticed that those calls may elicit a stress response which means we may need longer phone calls or more designated times to talk to families.

Group B: We shared a lot of the same things and our conversations were very similar. We spoke a lot about just the support and communication from our leadership and from staff to staff. There are a lot of unique ways our leadership and organization are supporting us at this time. In my group some members shared they have townhalls every week or every other week to discuss new ways to approach changes with Covid. One member mentioned they were given welcome back bags with wipes, hand sanitizer, just self-care items. We talked a lot about those phone calls being longer because of that isolation they’re feeling. We’re noticing the importance of our role at this point. It’s be an interesting journey with COVID-19 with some downsides but some upsides as well.

Group C: We didn’t talk a lot about COVID stuff. We talked a lot about moving forward and looking at things from a more virtual perspective. There was a lot of discussion on moving things virtually, and having a professional come in on those virtual meetings. We talked about some suggestions for the newer members of our group about networking in the OPO world.

Group D: One thing I think we were all in agreement on is that families are wanting more time and needing more from us right now. We discussed that some organizations are transferring to online counseling from in person and sharing grief materials through online webinars. I think we’re all missing our colleagues and donor families and this will be a challenging change. We talked about how this time really drilled home the importance of what we do.

Summary of Family Services Breakout Sessions

Group I: One of the things we talked about what we’d like to keep going is the phone training and having those refreshers, even though they prefer the in-person interviews. Also, the flexibility of using teams and not everyone having to come into the office and the flexibility of working from home to help people feel refreshed. They talked about memory making for tissue families. My organization does so much for organ families that really putting effort into tissue and eye was a big takeaway. We also discussed using GoPros to tape honor walks so families have them after they’re over. Donation doesn’t stop and there’s always someone waiting on you to do your job.

Group II: We had a really diverse group with a good spread throughout the country. There aren’t as many family members and coordinators allowed into the ICU so its nice to talk to just the immediate family instead of all the neighbors. We talked about not always extubating in the hospital rooms but discussed ideas of where else to extubate. We discussed families being able to call into a recorded line as well. Also communicating with families prior and after recovery.

Group III: We did all discuss that handling everything virtually initially was difficult but can be a faster line of communication anyways. Some teams are requesting one meeting a month on Skype or zoom instead. We discussed how to give hope, but also being more frank to families. Just being really transparent to families. Carolina Donor Services sent supplies to everyone’s home like masks and scrubs. People shared that they felt their OPO kept them well informed at this time. Teams have really become creative at this time. Like telephone approaches have changed but those changes have been helpful.

Group IV: The one thing that we took away from everything we talked about was the encouragement and knowing that what we’re doing in this business has been amplified even more in this pandemic. It’s been brought to the forefront of how important our job is and the support we give these families. One of the concerns we had was combating the burnout. We talked about all the stressors with the change. Some of us our confident now that we’re more busy than we’ve ever been even from working at home and just discussing being worried about burnout as this goes on. Because of all the changes happening staff have upped their creativity and come away with new things they can do for donor families.

We had a fantastic time at this Summit, and we are deeply appreciative to all who could attend, present and/or help moderate the event. We would love to do another one down the road, and we’re hopeful we can get even more OPOs involved in sharing best practices and collaborating to work together to face the challenges of the changes that COVID-19 has brought to the health care community!

We hope this summary has been helpful to you, and we want you to know that we’re here to be a resource however we can be on anything you’d like to know about marketing research!

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