American’s Got Nurses Interview Article – Transplant Nurse

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What is a transplant nurse and what do they do? A transplant nurse will help patients donate and received organs and prepare living donors for transplant procedures and inform them of any risks. They are involved in the care from beginning to the end. They will care for the patients as well as assist the medical team in surgery work, post-operative care and monitor patients after the transplant for any complications such as organ rejection, infections and so on.

Salary

According to DegreeFinders, it is said that the median salary is around $62,000 per year. It goes on to say that the field is projected to grow 22% from 2012 to 2022 and those with extensive experience will have the best opportunities in the field. Also, there are those who are retiring or leaving the profession, which leaves more room for demand and growth potential.

Questions for a Transplant Nurse

In an article on Nurse Zone titled “Roles in Transplant Nursing,” Julie Hudson, RN, MSN, CCTC, and liver transplant coordinator at Duke University Hospital says, “Transplants allow patients to trade an illness that would shorten life for a manageable condition.”

“For some transplant patients, it is not always about longevity, but quality of life” states Tracie Holland, RN, BSN, CCTC, lung transplant coordinator at Duke University Hospital. Then, she goes on to say, “We treat patients of all ages and some transplant lists do not have any age restrictions.”

Transplant Nurse Safety

There is a level of after care that a patient must endure after receiving a transplant. Kidney transplant patients will at one point or another have to go through dialysis. Many times, they might say that it is a 4-hour process and it is hard to stay in a chair without too much movement during the process. If you move too much, the machine alarms, which can move the needle or cause other issues.

Infection and rejection are a couple things that fall very high on the list of cautions that a transplant nurse and other medical team members will watch for. Almost always, there are medications that must be administered after receiving a transplant to help the patient’s body accept the organ easier.

Transplants are never easy, especially for family members who lost a loved one and had any of their organs donated. Some recipients know the families of the donor and have developed a special bond between them. Others have no idea and have no information and wish they had gotten a better support system from the medical teams.

Sometimes families will donate the organs of a deceased loved one to the study of science. Donating organs saves lives every day. Some patients seem to wait for years to even get on the list to receive an organ transplant. The organs donated for science are used for research in hopes of finding out why things happen and getting to the bottom of how it can be treated. The medical field is very complex and without donations of organs, funds and performing clinical studies many of the breakthroughs would not have ever been found.