A Few Minutes With Claire Williams, Specialist Nurse for Organ Donation
Like many others, we are supporting Organ Donation Week (Monday 20 – Sunday 26 September) and we're encouraging everyone to ‘have the talk’ with their friends and family to let them know of their organ donation wishes – just two minutes could save a life.
More than 5,900 people are currently waiting for a transplant in the UK – 37 at our Children’s Hospital. We talked to Claire Williams, Specialist Nurse for Organ Donation, to talk about her experience working with patients who are in need of transplants.
In a nutshell, explain what your job entails?
My job starts from referral all the way through to facilitating the donation process in theatre. We support families through end-of-life conversations and any end-of-life decisions that their loved one may have had.
Along with offering pastoral support and keepsakes our team raise donation as part of the end of life pathway, which can offer many families a lot of comfort at such a difficult time.
When a family agrees to consent my job then entails of assessing suitability and finding transplant recipients that match the donor through collaboration with other transplant specialists.
When the time comes my role is to take the patient to theatre and support a specialist team of surgeons in safely retrieving the consented organs and ensuring these are transported safely to the correct locations.
Following this my final job is to provide last offices to the patient and follow up with the family with as much support as they need. My role also includes education, auditing and community engagement.
What achievement are you most proud of (so far)?
Organ Donation is a very adult nurse dominated area and having come from a paediatric background moving into this world was a big challenge for me.
I feel I have adapted well and I still get to dip into the paediatric environment within this role. I have also taken on the regional lead for Paediatric organ donation, so I am still in touch with my roots.
Why did you choose your career?
Previous to my role as a Specialist Nurse for Organ Donation I worked in Neonatal Intensive Care for 13 years, I have always been passionate about bereavement care and that of the family.
I spent a lot of time trying to ensure that what was a horrific time in people’s lives could be left with a positive memory of that experience.
As nurses we are compassionate beings and our care doesn’t and shouldn’t end with death so it’s important to make that time count for the family.
The family of a baby I cared for wanted to pursue organ donation and I had never come across it in NNU. When I learnt more about it, it fired up my passion for bereavement care and ways to support and benefit the end-of-life pathway for the patient and families.
Who would you say was your inspiration?
I know I probably should say Florence Nightingale or something like that, but I am a Disney nut and I am going to say Rapunzel. Why? Because she’s feisty, she knows what she wants, she challenges herself and questions everything to learn and be a better person.
If there was one thing you could change in the world, what would it be?
Poverty
Describe yourself in three words?
Hilarious, fierce and small.
Finally, not a lot of people know this about me but…
I have a strong passion for performing arts. Prior to my nurse training I was a dancer for many years, focusing on ballet, modern tap and contemporary. I wasn’t really the right height to be a dancer but I spent many of my teen years believing that was the path I would follow.