A new state law for 2017 allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to sign up as organ donors can make a significant improvement in the ability to get a life-saving organ to a patient waiting for one. The law brings New York in alignment with most other states, allowing the teens to sign as donors on a driver’s license or permit. Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network Marketing Director Nancy Ryan stresses the importance of accessing young people.
“It’s so critical because without that capture of those young people at the DMV, it could be 8 years until a person even has to walk back into a department of motor vehicle office to renew a license. So we would be missing years’ and years’ time to even be posing the question about organ donation again.”
Ryan encourages families to get it out in the open...so a snap decision isn’t made at the D-M-V about being a donor. The Finger Lakes Donor Network will be developing school lessons to inform teens.
“Encouraging students then to have the conversation back at home with mom, dad, grandma, brother or sister. This is a family discussion so that everyone’s aware of what each other’s wishes are.”
She acknowledges families can be faced with tough decisions at the time of someone’s passing if there’s confusion about someone’s desires.
“We work with families all the time, that unfortunately are sometimes surprised their loved-one even registered. They didn’t even know they were a registered organ donor. Families are actually very relieved when they find out, ‘oh, thank goodness that my husband or my wife, or my mother or father took the time to make that decision so that other family members don’t have to decide that at what likely is a very difficult time.”
Ryan is looking to later this year for more improvements in registration for organ donors, something on which New York lags far behind other states.
“We’re very hopeful that a new registry will be in place in this calendar year, 2017. But until that time, I have to swing it back to, most people relate registering as an organ donor at the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is wonderful. But in New York State if you don’t have to go into a DMV for an extended period of time, it’s out of sight, out of mind.”
Ryan says that makes it more important to get donors to decide early. Younger organs can also be desirable – both for younger recipients and because they’re likely to be healthier. But she says that’s not a reason for Baby Boomers or older people in their 70s or beyond, not to register.
New York State has 10,000 people waiting for life-saving organs. In this region at Upstate University Hospital and Strong Memorial there are about 600. Ryan says in some cases people wait years…and in others become too sick or die before the organ they need ever becomes available.
The law allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to register as organ donors takes effect next month.
