Jennifer Acklen, RN

Jennifer is an extraordinary clinician and always provides excellent evidence-based nursing care. The Southwest Transplant Alliance team and I would like to recognize her for her heroic efforts in the following event. By preemptively supporting measures to normalize the lab values of this recently declared brain-dead patient while also monitoring/treating respiratory and cardiac issues as they arose, Jennifer bought time to allow for the successful harvesting of organs to save others. In what was otherwise a very sad and traumatic event, Jennifer’s efforts along with the assistance of other unit nurses made the difference forever changing the lives of 3 organ recipients.

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Additionally another nurse teamed with Jennifer who had she not pressed to apply the CBIG’s STA would not have had a donor to recover organs from. Here is a list of a few of the tasks she acted on: Started T4Ordered labs, Treated abnormal lab values, Facilitated brain death testing, Obtained a cardiac output monitor, Vent changes. She stayed in communication with the on-call coordinator as they had several conversations throughout the night. Ultimately had it not been for her hard work and diligence, STA would not have had a chance to save lives through donation. Ultimately because of what she accomplished STA was able to pull 3 names off the waitlist and heart and lungs were donated to research. Bottom line, Jennifer helped to save 3 lives that day and many more through research. Thank y’all for your dedication to donation and the culture of donation that you all have helped to build at UTMB. Ever so grateful.