Blessing Health System issued the following announcement on Nov. 19.
From her personal pain, Kristen DeVine wants to bring some peace to families facing tragedy. Kristen is a registered nurse in Blessing Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. Over four years in ICU, she has cared for families of patients who became organ donors. Kristen has seen how organ donation helps family members find something positive to which to cling in their sea of sorrow.
She found herself in that same place in the summer of 2019 when her younger sister died unexpectedly from a ruptured blood vessel in her brain. Kristen’s sister was an organ donor.
“They did an Honor Walk for her at Barnes Hospital,” Kristen stated. “It was really moving.”
An Honor Walk is offered to the family of an organ donor as the donor is escorted from their hospital room. It involves as many caregivers as possible lining the hallway in silent respect as the donor and family move to the destination of the donation within the hospital.
“There were probably 100 people,” Kristen recalls of her sister’s Honor Walk. “There were nurses, doctors and housekeepers, they lined the hall as we walked from her room to the elevator. They didn’t even know her, but they honored her. They honored her passing and the donation she would make to others.”
After that experience, Kristen worked with Blessing Hospital nursing leadership, the hospital’s Life Team, whose members specializes in issues regarding organ donation, and the Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network, which serves hospitals and donor families in the region, to bring the Honor Walk to Blessing Hospital.
Beginning December 1, when a death occurs at Blessing Hospital in which an organ donation will be made, an offer will be made to the patient’s loved ones to have an Honor Walk. If the family accepts, a message will be sent electronically to all Hospital employees on duty with the patient’s room number and the time the patient will be moved from the room. Available employees will be asked to come to the location and join their coworkers lining the halls in silent honor of the donor and their loved ones.
“I’ve seen it from both sides,” Kristen said, as the loved one of a donor and an RN. “Organ donation and the Honor Walk help bring some closure to a tragic situation.”
“The connections Blessing caregivers make involve the patient’s loved ones whenever possible,” said Maureen Kahn, RN, MHA, MSN, president and chief executive officer, Blessing Hospital and Blessing Health System. “The Honor Walk will be a poignant, visual reminder of the connection we feel with them and the respect we have for the selfless choice their loved one has made to help others in need.”
Original source can be found here.
Source: Blessing Health System
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