The last Tuesday in April was a busy day for Gina Fullen, a representative with Southwest Transplant Alliance. She spent much of that day in or right outside an operating room at Jennie Sealy Hospital as doctors and nurses procured organs and tissues from a young man who had died only a few days earlier.
“We’re finishing up with a donor right now in the OR,” Fullen said that evening. “His gift has pulled seven names off the transplant list.”
Southwest Transplant Alliance named UTMB Health a Top 25 Donor Hospital for 2022. The award recognizes outstanding partnerships that support the Dallas-based nonprofit organ procurement organization. UTMB placed fourth, tied with five other donor hospitals, Fullen said. In 2022, UTMB had 13 donors.
“UTMB has been consistent in getting this recognition,” Fullen said. “We have about 250 donor hospitals, and UTMB Galveston is one of the 12 transplant programs we work closely with.”
Born and raised in Galveston, Fullen is one of eight staff workers with the nonprofit’s Galveston-Beaumont office. She has filled many different roles with the organization over more than 20 years, working with grieving families, figuring out logistics and improving algorithms. Her current role is in hospital development, which means educating hospital staff, updating them on FDA requirements or restrictions and when the right time is to contact the nonprofit.
“My job is to get the phone to ring,” she said.
Fullen works most closely with the ICU staff, trauma surgeons and neurosurgeons on the donor side. Then there’s the transplant services side. Fullen stressed the need in her mission for a clear delineation between the donation side and the transplant
side, especially when a donor hospital also has a transplant program.
She delineates the two sides by following United Network for Organ Sharing guidelines and working long-term with professionals. At UTMB Health, that includes Chuck Machner, administrative director of Transplant Services. And on the donor side, it includes Christine Wade, interim chief nursing executive. Wade is someone who has cleared the path for many organ and tissue donors, Fullen said.
“Christine Wade and I have worked closely together for 12 to 15 years,” Fullen said. “She’s my go-to. I helped put together the systems that make the hospital have a culture of donation. And she helped me with it from the UTMB side.”
When Fullen started working with Southwest Transplant Alliance in the 1990s, she worked with Mary Ann Armendariz, a kidney and kidney transplant coordinator. She also was the mother of Josette Armendariz-Batiste, Vice President, Patient Care Services and System Chief Nurse Executive, who died in April.
Armendariz-Batiste was a dedicated nursing professional who, as an organ donor, continues to change and save lives even after her passing. As many as 75 people have benefitted from her decision to donate her organs.
Becoming an organ donor starts with people providing their information on the donor registry. After that, it’s important for them to let their loved ones know their wishes. Fullen said she has been in situations where someone died and had signed up to be a donor, but their next-of-kin had no idea. That left her with the job of getting the family to agree before moving on to the next step.
“It's so much easier, a thousand times easier, when people have that conversation ahead of time,” Fullen said. “That way, that's one thing less they have to worry about. They know what their loved one wanted. And so now, it's just up to us to work together to honor it.”
National Donate Life Blue & Green Day
In remembrance of Dr. Josette Armendariz-Batiste and all organ donors, UTMB recognized National Donate Life Blue & Green Day on April 14. UTMB staff, faculty and students were encouraged to wear blue and green and to share the Donate Life message.
The fountain on the Galveston Campus and the hospital on the Clear Lake Campus were lit up in green.
Hundreds of people showed up to line the halls from the elevators to the front door in an honor walk as Armendariz-Batiste's body was taken from Jennie Sealy to an ambulance for transportation to the transplant center in Dallas.
For more photos from Donate Life Blue & Green Day, see the I Am UTMB photo album.