Donation & Family Advocate at Portland, OR (Marquam Hill) – Portland, Oregon

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

• Bachelor's degree from a four-year accredited college or university in biologic or social sciences, or equivalent
  relevant experience may be considered.

Experience:

• Two years’ experience in healthcare marketing, sales, hospital settings or specific experience working with
  bereaved individuals and/or families.
• Crisis intervention skills and a demonstrated ability to discern between grief issues and other life issues that merit referral to other resources as necessary.

Job Related Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (Competencies):

• 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.

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