Topic 1:

Academic Transplantation – From Dreams to Reality

 Speaker: Prof Stuart Johnston Knechtle

Organ transplantation requires a multi-disciplinary team to work effectively together to accomplish complex patient evaluation, surgical procedures, and post-transplant care.  Although a variety of methods have been developed to achieve these ends, common principles include joint patient care by surgical and medical disciplines, dependence on supportive hospital services including pathology, blood bank, tissue typing, radiology, interventional radiology, paediatrics, intensive care, psychiatry and psychology, social services, nursing services, and dedicated transplant coordinators. In other words, most of the services provided by tertiary care centres must function well in order for a transplant programme to thrive. Therefore, a successful transplant programme implies a well-managed healthcare system. 

Traditional silos of medical care may not be ideally suited for supporting a transplant centre, and adapting structures to allow more flexibility to meet the needs of a transplant program may help transplantation flourish. Alignment of incentives to encourage growth, development of quality metrics to measure improved care, well-designed IT support systems, and continual process improvement are administrative goals of leading transplant programmes. The merging of research and clinical missions within a transplant centre requires leadership to constantly demonstrate the importance of the contributions of both scientific and clinical members of the team, and to elevate the collective mission of the centre above individual contributions.