At Penn Nursing, transplant care is more than a moment—it’s a lifelong commitment to patients and their second chance at life.
2 min. read
There are about 48,000 solid organ transplants performed each year in the United States. Kidneys are most common, with liver, heart and lung following. Bone marrow (also called stem cell) transplants number around 23,000; the majority go to leukemia patients.
Donated organs, tissues, and cells are life-changing. But the surgery is just one step in a complicated process that spans years. Some patients are hospitalized while they await transplantation. Immediately post-surgery, many require intensive care. After discharge, they need physical rehabilitation and regular health checks. Throughout this entire journey, transplant nurses are there for them.
“We know their families, their kids, their dogs, and it’s so special to be able to take care of people in the hardest time of their life and over such a long period of time. Whenever they get admitted with complications for the rest of their life, they’re admitted to our team,” says Lindsay Krott, a liquid oncology and cell therapy nurse practitioner at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Penn Nursing alumni and practicing faculty treat adult patients before and after transplants in hospitals in various roles. As transplant nurse coordinators, they help evaluate a person’s suitability for transplantation and match available organs to recipients, and they oversee logistics in a setting where procedures often happen suddenly as organs become available. Other nurses administer a lifetime of outpatient follow-up. All rely on a unique blend of knowledge and skill. They need the skills to provide for high-risk individuals and build trusting relationships with patients and their families. Alumni and faculty also work in policy, using a patient-centered approach with regard to national organ waitlists and medications. Others focus on research that improves the quality of life for transplant patients.
Navigating all the stages of transplant surgery requires a multidisciplinary team that includes social workers, psychiatrists, nutritionists, pharmacists, financial coordinators, and palliative care. “Nurses coordinate it all,” says Kate Ventura, a Penn Medicine clinical nurse specialist in transplant quality who also got her master’s in health leadership with a minor in nursing education and postmaster’s clinical nurse specialist certificate from Penn Nursing.
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