Making Donation Happen:
What is a Family Support Coordinator?

This new blog series highlights the different roles vital to our mission of giving hope, life, and healing. From those on the front lines to those behind the scenes, teammates will share more about their work and what inspires them save lives through organ, eye, and tissue donation.

My name is Molly Viktora, and it’s been nearly 4 years since I joined the family services team at LifeShare Carolinas. My role is to support grieving families and talk to them about their loved one becoming an organ, eye, and tissue donor. People often say to me, “I don’t know how you do this every day.” Honestly, sometimes, I don’t know how I’m able to do it either. The job can be difficult, but I can confidently say it’s always an honor to walk alongside families during some of their worst days. By guiding them through the donation process, I can give them a glimmer of hope in the midst of their grief.

How Donation Found Me

Growing up, I had a close family friend with a rare heart condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. He ended up receiving a heart transplant when we were both in high school. That experience planted a seed of interest in the world of transplant and donation. Years later, I read a job description for LifeShare. It was the perfect combination of my interest in health sciences and my love of helping others. It also reminded me of my friend and his journey to receive a heart transplant. I thought it would be so cool to be on the other side of that, helping families going through the donation process.

 Supporting Families

As family support coordinators, the days are unpredictable, busy, and always different. I am one of the administrators on call for our team. Throughout the day, I assign donation cases to my fellow family support coordinators. I also keep track of where the team is throughout our service area which spans southwestern North Carolina.

Our days start early at the hospitals, coordinating with care teams to learn about any patients who are potential candidates for donation. However, we don’t have any input in the patient’s care or talk to the patient’s family until every lifesaving effort has been exhausted.

Once a patient is declared brain dead or a family makes the decision to withdraw care, family support coordinators talk with the patient’s loved ones about donation. We also support them in their grief and guide them every step of the way through the donation process.

I think many of my family support teammates would agree the hardest days can leave a lasting impact. When I think about the difference I can make, one specific family comes to mind. When I first talked with them, they were ready to remove their loved one from the ventilator and say their final goodbye. I encouraged them to pause for a moment and consider allowing their loved one to be a donor through donation after circulatory death (DCD). They agreed to think about it, and they ended up becoming very supportive of donation.

The rest of the day, they shared stories of their loved one with me. We laughed and cried together. They even gave me a nickname. They made such an impact on me, I came in on one of my days off to attend their loved one’s honor walk. I will never forget their faces when they saw me walk into the ICU to be there with them. That moment that stuck with me and always will. I love knowing that they found comfort in donation and that they could confidently walk through the rest of their journey knowing that their loved one saved someone’s life.

Whitney is My Why

I can’t talk about why I do this job without talking about Whitney Hoppes. She was a family support coordinator who passed away almost 3 years ago. Whitney took me under her wing, acted as a big sister to me, and was always someone to look up to. She was fearless in this role and she loved hard. When I first started working with her, I was thrown off by her sense of urgency because I wasn’t sure why we were always running. I came to learn that it wasn’t necessarily about urgency. It was about passion. Whitney had passion for talking with families, passion for advocating for donation, passion for helping her teammates, and the list goes on. Her laugh and southern voice are forever ingrained in my memory. Her ability to connect with families was remarkable and inspirational. Whitney is a big reason why I continue to do this role.

We have a whiteboard in the office at one of our main hospitals which reads, “Grief never ends… but it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith… It’s the price of Love.” It was written on the board by Whitney shortly before she passed. Almost 3 years later, that writing remains untouched.

Donation is a Gift

To the families who are actively walking through this journey: thank you for thinking of others in your hardest moment and for allowing us to get to know you and sharing your family members’ stories with us.

Being a family support coordinator has impacted me in more ways than I was prepared for. I am forever thankful for the moments this career has brought me so far, the families I have met, and the donors that selflessly donated for the sake of others.