Donation & Family Advocate

Department Overview

Help Save Lives. Support Families. Make an Impact.

Cascade Life Alliance (CLA) is seeking a compassionate, adaptable, quick-thinking professional with a unique blend of relationship-building skills, crisis support experience, problem-solving, and strategic communication abilities to serve as a Donation & Family Advocate (DFA) for this region. This role is ideal for individuals who excel at navigating sensitive conversations, developing trust quickly, and guiding families through complex decisions.

The duties of this position are in support of the mission and goals of Cascade Life Alliance (CLA). These include ensuring effective communication, education and collaboration with donor families, physicians, and hospital staff regarding the organ donation process and the facilitation of a multi-disciplinary approach for the authorization process. The Donation & Family Advocate supports and educates the potential donor’s next-of kin regarding donation options, including providing end-of life care and support. They work alongside clinical team members and collaborate with hospital staff to be both an advocate for donation and a resource to ensure a smooth donation process. The Donation and Family Advocate is also responsible to maintaining current education on transplant and donation practice as an expert in the field. 

This position requires an individual who is comfortable addressing challenging face-to-face situations in a critical care (ICU) setting. This individual must be equipped to navigate and troubleshoot dynamic environments with constantly changing stakeholders with attention to detail. This position requires an ability to develop rapport quickly, maintain strong collaboration across disciplines, independently problem solve, and balance the needs of acutely grieving families while ensuring a successful donation process. Role expectations include holding professional boundaries with individuals who are experiencing trauma and complex grief. This position is responsible for creating a positive organ donation culture and ensuring best practices within CLA’s Donation Service Area (DSA) hospitals.

This position requires extensive on-call responsibilities, multimodal travel throughout the state of OR, WA, and ID when on 24hr call, and the ability to work long hours, sometimes overnight.

Function/Duties of Position

On-Site Donation Advocacy and Family Support: 

• Serve as liaison between donor families, physicians, and hospital staff to facilitate the organ donation process with care and professionalism alongside CLA staff throughout the donation case.
• Collaborate with hospital teams and clinical colleagues to ensure a seamless, multi-disciplinary approach to the donation process.
• Proactively work to foster a positive donation culture in hospitals by building relationships with key stakeholders and advocating for best practices.
• Rotate 24-hour call responsibilities with team of Donation & Family Advocates, which involves rapid multimodal transportation to provide on-site support for donor families at hospitals throughout CLA’s service area as needed
• Provide sensitive, high-quality bereavement support to families while helping them understand and navigate donation options with respectful consideration of culture, beliefs, trauma, and grief process.
• Collaboratively assesses appropriate timing to educate potential donor's next-of-kin (NOK) about donation options, status of donor designation, or opportunity to authorize donation while leveraging active listening skills to guide families through critical conversations in high-pressure environments.
• Facilitate authorization or disclosure (first-person authorization) with legal NOK and accurately conducts a donor risk assessment interview with identified surrogate of the potential organ donor.
• Adapt to dynamic and emotionally intense situations, maintaining professional boundaries while offering empathetic, informed guidance.
• Completes accurate and timely documentation of donation related activities, including but not limited to post-donation family and professional outcome feedback.

Donation Advocacy and Hospital Support:

• Ensures effective communication, process coordination and collaboration with hospital partner staff including nurses and physicians, CLA colleagues and administration, and partner agencies. 
• Maintains current understanding of individual hospital cultures, policies and best practices. 
• Serves as an in-person consultant, educator and content expert to healthcare partners for duration of call shift and case activity.
• Responsible for onsite/real time troubleshooting, problem solving and relationship building. 
• Coordinates accurate and timely feedback with the hospital development department to ensure continued collaboration and successful interactions with hospital partners. 

Department Support, Education and Collaboration:

• Maintains awareness of current active referrals and pending case activity 
• Collaborates with CLA Aftercare Department to support the program and ensure a smooth transition from hospital family care to the aftercare program.Supports hospital development team in the participation of post-case reviews, hospital new employee orientation lectures, and task force committee presentations. Assists in the development and participation of annual strategic planning. 
• Collaborates with OPC colleagues, Manager of Family Services, and Clinical Managers to serve as a content expert for presentation of case reviews and education opportunities to entire CLA staff. 
• Participates in departmental on-going education opportunities and serves as a support resource in the onboarding of new Donation & Family Advocates and OPC staff. 
• Maintains current knowledge and understanding of best practices in the donation and transplantation industry. 

Other duties as assigned 

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, business, communications, or healthcare related field, and 2 years' experience in marketing, education, and/or healthcare

Job Related Knowledge, Skills and Abilities  (Competencies):

• Crisis intervention skills and a demonstrated ability to discern between grief issues and other life issues that merit referral to other resources as necessary. 
• Must be compassionate, conscientious and ethical with strong interpersonal skills to deal effectively with conflict resolution, donor families in crisis and a variety of medical professionals.
• Ability to persist in situations dealing with intense emotions, diverse cultures and interpersonal dynamics on a regular basis.
• Flexibility with unpredictable work schedule: ability to take extended call, be out of town overnight for multiple days, function for extended hours and work productively both independently and as a team participant.
• Self-starter, resilient, strong, socially intuitive, self-aware and detail oriented. 
• Must be an excellent communicator, both written and verbally, and able to communicate clearly with sensitivity to the context of conversation and audience participating.
• Operating knowledge of computers and a minimum basic level skills in Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and other comparable software programs and Apple iPhones required for fulfilling job duties.

Preferred Qualifications

• One or more years working in an OPO in family support, aftercare or hospital development.
• Bi-lingual, preferably Spanish speaking.
• Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW

Additional Details

Donation and Family Advocate will be required to be on-call for 24 hour periods, travel via ground or air to donor hospitals to support families, screen, obtain authorization, review medical records, educate, attend committee meetings, after action reviews, assist with donor management or any other donation related activities. 

Why apply to OHSU?

We are Oregon's only public academic health center. In addition to caring for patients, we lead groundbreaking research. We also train the next generation of health care professionals. As Portland's largest employer, we give you opportunities to learn and advance in a system of hospitals and clinics across Oregon and Southwest Washington. All are welcome. OHSU welcomes people of all ages, ethnicities, genders, national origins, religions and sexual orientations. We are striving to build an anti-racist, multicultural institution and encourage people with diverse backgrounds to apply. To request reasonable accommodation, contact askhr@ohsu.edu