Depression amoung OR nurses after organ harvesting

[redding6]

I am not finding any information on depression amoung OR nurses who have assisted with organ harvesting. A few articles actually mention the existence of OR nurses finding the experience difficult to deal with, but I wonder if anyone has done a study or workup on the subject. I am an OR nurse and am attempting to do a CE on the circulators duties in the organ harvesting process. My CE will be targeted at OR nurses and so I thought the objective of the effect the process has on the OR nurse would be interesting. Maybe this is a topic for someone to do a paper on. If you know of any article, study, or someplace where one can be found, could you post it? Otherwise, anyone out there assisted with organ procurement and found it depressing.

Thanks, Kathy

[HeatherB,CST]

it's also a satisfying form of closure to receive followup from the organ bank nurses who always write us later to tell us a little about each of the recipients of our patient's generosity.

last week a framed photo showed up in our lounge - i swear this is true. a middle aged woman was standing with her ear to the chest of a healthy-looking young man. she was listening to her deceased son's heart beat in the young man. omg!!! there wasn't a dry eye in the place. i'll never forget that image.

good luck,

linda

okay, my bet is that there won't be a dry eye reading this post! *sniffle*

that's amazing.

[elcue]

Akor,

In my experience, the folks who harvest bone following organ procurement will place legths of PVC pipe in place of the removed long bones prior to closing the limbs back up. This preserves a more normal appearance in consideration of post-mortem viewing by the deceased's family.

Makes post-mortem care emotionally easier for nurses.

Linda

[BloodNGuts]

I have done numerous organ harvests and they are a very different animal than any other surgical procedure. I would not say they are depressing but there is a solemness. A person is losing their life in my presence yet others will live and live better because of this person's gift. It is a very busy type of procedure so there often isn't a whole lot of time to process the whole thing. The underlying tone for me is just the solemness. The eery part of these procedures is that once the aorta is clamped, the anesthesia machines are turned off and the normal white noise of the cardiac monitor is gone. It is amazing how that little difference is felt.

[elcue]

You're right, B&G. Solemn is exactly the correct description of the atmosphere during an organ provcurement. I've never quite pur my finger on it thatprecisely before.

Linda

[gallacher2001]

I work in Scotland in anaesthesia and scrub in a busy theatre dept. I am also on-call on a 1:2 basis for organ retrieval. My experience of the whole journey thankfully is not one that involves greedy, squabbling surgeons! All cases that I have been involved in have taken place in the middle of the night, it's just the nature of the beast, theatres are available at these hours. Overall I feel quite privileged to be one of only 2 nurses at our hospital to provide care for the donors and their families.

I don't so much find the experience solemn as I do respectful, I personally feel an immense amount of respect for the patient and their families, the cold hard truth of it is that unfortunately that person has died/is dying and nothing can change that, it has happened and is an inevitable part of life by the time you become involved, what I find is that by agreeing to donate their organs so that others may have a chance at life or a substantially improved one is in a way the ultimate un-selfish sacrifice and something I hold the patient in great revere for.

We have 2 specialist teams fly in to actually carryout the surgery, they bring with them their own scrub nurse, my duty is to work in anaesthetics and circulating and perhaps most importantly conduct the last offices. I am always alone bar the company of the renal co-coordinator when conducting last offices, just the patient, the co-coordinator and me. I feel quite honored to be able to be so attentive and take as long as is necessary to provide the patient with the optimum level of care.

From the anaesthetics point of view their is an immense amount for us to do, it's an aneathestic just like any other, no different, IV fluids, catheter, body warmers, everything as it would be in a "normal" case, we always provide opiates also, there are many anaesthetists who question the giving of analgesia to "doners" on the ground that they simply don't feel anything, but thankfully my colleagues and I both feel that it is very worthwhile and provides peace of mind of a comfortable passing.

For me as others have mentioned, perhaps the most alien of all moments is when the ventilator and monitors are switched off, because it's what we are used too, because it's an integral part of what we as theatre nurses do, having no life signs, no noise is indeed a little un-nerving particularly the first time you experience it. This for me though is perhaps the only negative or somewhat distressing factor in the process.

To address the initial question as to whether or not depression is a factor, for me I would have to say that it is not. Yes, dealing with children is indeed very very difficult, that's about the only time I will feel affected by the process negatively, but that is of course only human. It is immensely satisfying to receive that letter from the co-coordinator detailing the eventual recipients of the donated organs, sometimes it can be many 6 or 7 people, I find that even if I have been a little down about the case, that letter makes it all worth while and in some ways brings a smile thinking that one patient helped so many others and I was fortunate enough to be a part of that! :)

[bifurcated]

In our facility if you had a strong objection to organ procurement you didn't have to do it. I never really saw anyone depressed after helping on a donor patient because most of us felt that we were carrying out the wishes of the patient by giving "life" to others. I thought before my first harvest that it would be distasteful in some way.... but the transplant team was so efficient and wonderfully professional and helpful it felt right to do it. The only weirdness came when anesthesia left........ that was strange but by then I felt like part of the transplant team and it was a good feeling. As always, we were respectful with the body and it was beneficial to so many other sick people. Why not talk to transplant teams and ask them what is the most challenging part?