Abstract
The report from the Organ Donation Taskforce into the relatively poor rates of donation in the UK called for a complete overhaul of the processes that currently support the identification, referral and management of potential organ donors dying in our hospitals. Although some of the specific recommendations of the Taskforce refer to the responsibilities of national bodies such as the Department of Health or NHS Blood and Transplant, at the very heart of the Taskforce report are those recommendations that are concerned with how the option of donation is made available to patients when they die. Thus, the Taskforce recommended that donation should be a component of end-of-life care, that brainstem death should be diagnosed wherever possible and that potential donors should always be referred according to defined minimum criteria and regardless of apparent donation potential. However, it was recognised that this was unlikely to happen unless every hospital had a team to make it possible - the Donation Committee - that was chaired and driven by a non-clinical champion, enhanced by a donor transplant co-ordinator and lead by a clinician. This paper develops these themes and describes, by focusing on a collaborative relationship between donor transplant co-ordinators and clinical leads for organ donation, how real improvements in the number of organ donors might be achieved.