August LifeSaver’s Award

At LifeCenter Northwest, collaborating with local hospitals, medical centers and medical professionals is an essential part of fulfilling our mission of working together to save lives through organ and tissue donation. These partnerships literally make donation possible. We established the LifeCenter Northwest LifeSaver Award, presented monthly, to honor those who demonstrate a commitment to improving donation outcomes and/or culture through their actions, time and energy. We are proud to announce our August LifeSaver Award winner, Bryan Garrett, Director of Critical Care at Valley Hospital in Spokane, Washington.

Recently, Valley Hospital had their first organ donation case in many years. In a scenario where it would have been easily justifiable to walk away from evaluating certain organs for transplant, Bryan went above and beyond to assemble the teams needed to perform the evaluations required to place organs.
For example, after our clinical coordinators had exhausted all their available options to have a SWAN placed at the bedside, a complex procedure not typically available at the hospital, we informed the care team we would likely not be able to place the heart for transplant. Bryan stepped into action, and reached out to an anesthesiologist, Dr. Josh Ward, who was willing to come in and complete the procedure.

Our team strongly believes that, at a minimum, this patient’s heart would not have been placed without Bryan’s efforts in identifying a physician who could place a SWAN which all transplant centers were requesting prior to accepting the heart for their patients.

Collaboration and leadership made a dynamic difference in the outcome of this case. We would like to thank Bryan for his hard work and dedication to helping us save lives through donation.