Grant Honors Organ Donors with Memorial Wall

Press Date: 09/27/2010

Columbus, OH – Grant Medical Center honored patients who gave the gift of life when it revealed Sunday a “Wall of Heroes” commemorating organ and tissue donors. Located in the newly remodeled critical care waiting area on the hospital’s third floor, the wall pays tribute to 15 donors who passed away within the past year. More donors will be added on an ongoing basis. “Those who have chosen organ and tissue donation are heroes in every sense of the word,” said Chief Nursing Officer Donna Hanly.

Grant created the wall in partnership with Lifeline of Ohio, the Columbus-based nonprofit organ procurement organization responsible for promoting and coordinating organ and tissue donation in central and southeastern Ohio. “Lifeline of Ohio is thrilled that Grant Medical Center, our largest donor hospital, has chosen to honor donors and their families with the Wall of Heroes,” said Dorrie Dils, Lifeline of Ohio’s chief clinical officer. “It demonstrates Grant’s longstanding dedication to donation and its support of donors and their families.”

The wall displays the pictures and names of donors, with the dates of their donations and the number of lives impacted by each donation. Family members of the first 15 honorees attended Sunday’s ceremony.

Grant’s organ and tissue donation council approved and supported the plan and worked with Lifeline of Ohio on the design.  “We thought it was a creative way to increase awareness about the lives that can be saved through donation,” said Perry, a member of the organ and tissue donation council.

Grant leadership is hopeful that the wall not only remembers individual donors, but stimulate discussions and decisions about organ and tissue donation among visitors to the wall’s busy waiting room area. Although 90 percent of adult Ohioans support tissue and organ donation, only 54 percent are registered donors. About one Ohioan dies every other day while waiting for a lifesaving transplant.

“Not everyone realizes the impact they can make,” said William Carroll, MD, medical director of neurology and a member of the organ and tissue donation council. “One donor has the potential to save eight lives through organ donation and enhance up to 50 lives as a tissue donor.  It’s an amazing legacy to leave, but it’s important that family members have this discussion ahead of time.”

The heart, intestine, liver, lungs, kidneys and pancreas are organs for transplant, while bone/tendon, cornea, heart valves, skin and veins/arteries are tissue for transplant.  “We want to give people the chance to see organ donors as real people and think about organ and tissue donation,” Dr. Carroll said.

via OhioHealth – Newsroom.