Web 2:0 Reader Comment Prompts Organ Donations Article

Author: Chaplain Paul Slater

What does Web 2.0 have to do with Organ Donations and Heart Transplants. On my career focused website, keywords such as heart transplant information, organ donor information, and organ donation information seemed to have little to do with the concept of Web 2.0 until a reader made this comment in response to a webpage invitation.

Organ Donations From A Ministry Opportunity Perspective

My webpage was about Church Sign Sayings and the first entry was very simple yet profound: “Be An Organ Donor; Give Jesus Your Heart”.

Since this Organ Donor church sign saying uses the concept of organ donation as a backdrop to make a spiritual point, let me use this church sign quote as a backdrop to a key health concern — heart disease and heart transplants, as well as organ donor programs.

Here are some facts I learned about heart transplants, organ donor needs, and organ donation programs, that from ministry perspective, reveal organ donation as an opportunity to serve others by giving the gift of life.

Heart Transplant And Heart Donation Information

• First of all, a heart transplant is an operation in which the diseased heart in a person is replaced with a healthy heart from a heart donor who has died.


• Because heart transplants are performed as a life-saving measure when other heart related medical treatment and less drastic surgery have failed, most heart transplant surgeries are performed on patients with end-stage heart failure.


• Note that donor hearts are in short supply. Heart donation programs help to alleviate the shortage. Patients needing a heart transplant go through a careful selection process at a designated heart transplant center.

Heart Transplant Process and Timeline

• For heart transplant operations to work, people like you and me need to be organ donors and become designated heart donors.


• Only then can patients who are eligible for a heart transplant have hope for a successful heart transplant surgery. The recipient of heart donations are placed on a waiting list. Note that what determines recipients receiving donor hearts are based on a few key factors:
  
  
  
  1. The urgency of the medical need,
  
  
  2. The specific organs that are available for a specific transplant,
  
  
  3. The location of the patient who is receiving the heart and the timeliness of the whole process to take place.
  
  
  4. And finally, donated organs are matched according to blood type and also takes into account both the size of donor and recipient.
  
  
  
  


• Once a recipient is on the organ donation list, the waiting period for a donor heart varies from several days to several months.

Ministry Careers Involved In A Heart Transplant Surgery

Recently I attended a chaplain’s continuing education class presented by a organ donation program chaplain who serves both donor patients and their families as well as recipient patients and their families.

His role as chaplain is to provide pastoral care to the families whose loved one is donating organs so that recipient of that donation may live. Health care careers and chaplain careers exist in this entire organ donation process.

Key medical careers involving medical professionals are involved from the very beginning of the organ donation process until the completion of the organ donation surgery. The organ donor program chaplain serves every individual involved in the heart transplant.

So now you know how a reader’s Web 2.0 church sign saying contribution to my website brought together the concepts of heart transplant information, organ donor information, and organ donation information, culminating this article on ministry opportunities.

National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Heart Disease Information including heart disease articles for those needing information about organ donor issues. The Diseases and Conditions Index (DCI) is a web based health index that complete and dependable information about heart, lung, and blood diseases and sleep disorders.