Episode 55: What Does A Hospital Services Coordinator do for an OPO, With Stephanie Gastaldo?

On this episode of This Thing Called Life, Andi speaks with Stephanie Gastaldo. This is our 6th episode in our series of exploring how the donation process works from the OPO lens.. Stephanie talks about her role in the department as a connector to the hospital partners and just keeping the education going and the lines of communication open. Tune in now!

 

Episode Highlights: 

• The purpose of the series is twofold; Andi wants to explain more about the OPOs role in functionality so that you can understand how the gifts of organ, eye and tissue donation come to be as well as just understand everything that goes into this life saving and life healing process. 
• Stephanie talks about her role at the Life Center. She also talks about how her brother was an organ and tissue donor. 
• Stephanie talks about her work at the Life Center as a Hospital Services Coordinator. She says that the best part of her job is to tell her elder brother's story and make people aware of organ, eye and tissue donation. 
• Stephanie's role is to make sure she is first and foremost and building relationships with the teams that includes physicians, bedside nurses, chaplain respiratory therapist, a hospital unit coordinator, patient care support staff to make sure that she is building these relationships, that they know who is life center, why we need to work together specifically educating that it's a center for Medicare and Medicaid services requirement. 
• Daily at 7:00 AM Stephanie takes a call with all the coordinators and the staff they connect to discuss what's going on, what the day is going to look like as it's always changing.
• Apart from her day-to-day duties Stephanie also focuses on building education and scheduling events. 
• Stephanie talks about the challenges faced by her department during the pandemic and how they coped up in the entire situation. 
• As a Hospital Unit Coordinator, you can't be super reactionary to things, you will have to be a hustler and good responder to challenging situations, says Stephanie.
• As a Hospital Unit Coordinator, you have to have really good skills of just listening and responding to what people are telling you and then being able to find the important information from what they are telling you.
• The biggest challenge of Stephanie's job is to slow down amidst all the hustle-bustle around her. 
• One of Stephanie's ways to reset her emotional dial is to hear a donor story or a donor family story or to hear the recipient's stories. 
• Stephanie talks about her biggest challenge in community relations.
• Not everyone has this same understanding or experience or level of support of donation that others may have made, says Andi.
• Stephanie's goal every day is just to make sure that her hospital staff is aware of the process to ultimately give these families what they deserve, which is the most respectful supportive braces through donation.

 

3 Key Points:

1. Stephanie talks about her life altering experience post losing two of her brothers. 
2. Stephanie shares the importance of relationship building and how she trains and motivates the staff and educates them so that they become ready to deal with patients and their families. 
3. Stephanie shares the skill sets and characteristics that are required to succeed as a Hospital Unit Coordinator.