Family Advocate

Family Advocate

This position supports donor families through organ and tissue donation in the hospital setting, and with ongoing grief and bereavement support after donation is complete. Daily activities include collaboration with IDN clinical team members, donor family members, interdisciplinary medical team and other essential stakeholders. Performance is measured by the satisfaction of the care provided to our donor families.

Essential functions and performance responsibilities include:

• Collaborating with the donor family by continually assessing family needs, establishing rapport and communicating with families to independently advocate for the needs of the family while simultaneously advocating for the donation process.
• Overseeing timely and respectful communication and collaboration with interdisciplinary medical team, donor families, and IDN team members.
• Ensuring excellence in continuum of care for donor families, including grief support, donor family correspondence with recipients, donor family events, and donor family support groups.
• Participating in scheduled monthly meetings, process improvement, and quality assurance activities within the work system and organization.

Position qualifications and education requirements include:

• A four-year degree in the areas of Social Services, Psychology, Family Services, Child Life, Counseling or other healthcare related field.
• A minimum of two years of equivalent work experience involving complex family dynamics, such as death and dying, grief and loss or supporting families in the hospital setting is preferred.

Skills and abilities include:

• Ability to establish strong, positive connections with diverse audiences, in rapidly changing, stressful, and unpredictable situations.
• Demonstrates a natural tendency to help, but not pressure others.
• Deliver health education suitable for all literacy levels.
• Excellent time management skills with a proven ability to prioritize needs and balance multiple simultaneous projects in a fast-paced and at times stressful environment.
• Exercise judgement in donation advocacy, crucial to the outcome of the case.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrates strong autonomy in decision making.

Physical requirements include:

• Maintain a current valid driver's license and be insurable through IDN's insurance.
• Respond to call/page within 10 minutes and arrive to office/hospital within one hour of call as appropriate.
• Travel to the office and donor hospitals through the State of Iowa at any given hour of the day or night. This travel may occur under various weather conditions.
• Must be able to lift up to 20 pounds at times.
• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Must respond timely to IDN communication outside of scheduled shifts.
• Must receive required vaccines based on outlined schedules to protect our employees, healthcare personnel, donors, recipients, and families we may come into contact.
• Duties of the position require travel or onsite response to execute essential job functions required in the facilitation of the donation process.

Organizational responsibilities include:

• Demonstrate commitment to the mission and vision.
• Maintain effective communication.
• Exhibit teamwork.
• Respect diversity.
• Follow policies and procedures.
• Maintain confidentiality of all donor, recipient and organizational information.
• Demonstrate accuracy and thoroughness while meeting productivity standards.
• Observe safety and security procedures.
• Be consistently punctual and dependable.
• Actively participate in performance improvement activities.
• Continually demonstrate behavioral expectations and core values.