The collaborative development of continuing education targeted to funeral professionals delivered by a national professional association.

Jim Mohr¹, Mathias Haun¹, Ken Lotherington ¹, Kim Young ¹

¹Organs and Tissues, Canadian Blood Services, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Funeral professionals indicate that 50% of all funerals are pre-planned, presenting a logical opportunity to initiate a donation discussion with clients. 

In 2008, governments gave Canadian Blood Services a mandate for organ and tissue donation and transplantation to support system performance improvement. In 2012 the Funeral Services Association of Canada (www.fsac.ca) was engaged as a national donation partner in the development of an on-line donation course targeted to funeral professionals to advance donation opportunities and improve relationships with recovery organizations.

Experts in on-line learning solutions were retained to manage the development and implementation of the course. The course content was informed by a panel of five experts representing funeral home/medical examiner liaisons, an eye bank, a tissue bank, a provincial donation organization and an expert in organ donation. The course was developed over six months and launched June 2013. It has been implemented in both English and French and upon completion of the course participants can receive Continuing Education Units towards their ongoing funeral professional education.

Module 1 introduces the concept of dual advocacy and provides funeral professionals with knowledge and motivation to appropriately and positively raise the opportunity for donation during pre-planned funeral conversations and to direct clients to provincial donation organizations and donation intent registries to action their wishes or obtain additional information.

Module 2 addresses the surgical aspect of organ and tissue recovery, encourages the development of collaborative working relationships with recovery organizations and provides guidance on expected practice of recovery organizations in body reconstruction.

Links to all Canadian donation and recovery organizations’ websites and intent-to-donate registries are provided to facilitate and encourage communication and relationship development. Each course participant is asked to complete a course evaluation to compare their level of confidence in discussing organ and tissue donation with clients before and after completing the course.