Our Core Values: Why Service Matters

By Kevin O’Connor, President & CEO

Three years ago, with the help of our governing board, we developed five core values for LifeCenter Northwest: integrity, respect, collaboration, service and courageous leadership. These five core values have guided our words and actions since then, with a clear and consistent focus on the main thing, which is helping as many people as possible through organ and tissue donation, and transplantation.

As stewards of the gift of life, we are dedicated to providing the highest quality service to the communities within our region. Service comes from the root word “serve”. One definition of this word is “to answer the needs of others”.  Every day at LifeCenter Northwest, we answer the needs of others. The needs of families who have lost a loved one. The needs of the thousands of patients awaiting life-saving and life-enhancing organs and tissues. The needs of our hospital and transplant program partners who help make donation and transplantation possible.

Dr. Joseph Murray, depicted in the painting to the right, performed the world’s first successful kidney transplant in 1954. When he accepted the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1990, he said it best: “Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this planet”.

It is an honor for us to be able to answer the needs of others, and it inspires us to always be our very best.  Serving others enriches our lives and gives our work meaning, and for that we are grateful.