Doctors WILL NOT let you die if you are a registered organ and tissue donor, here’s why:
Many people wonder: will Doctors Still Save my Life if I’m a Registered Organ Donor? The first priority of a medical professional is to save lives when sick or injured people come to the hospital. Organ and tissue donation isn’t even considered or discussed until after death is declared or a family has decided to take their loved one off of ventilated support. In fact, doctors and nurses involved in a person’s care before death are not involved in the recovery or transplantation of donated corneas, organs or tissues.
Hippocratic Oath. Being a medical professional means making a commitment to patients to save their lives. “I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm … May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.”
Most of the time, medical professionals don’t know whether or not a person is a registered donor. ER doctors, EMTs, and firefighters rarely know your registration status. Even if they did, what good does that do for them? They have no control over the donation process once a person is declared dead, no way to know who organs or tissues are going to, and work in a completely different department/organization than where donation and transplantation professionals work. In an emergency, they’re not checking your ID, nor do they have immediate access to registration status as it is confidential information.
Brain Death is the most common way a person can qualify to be an organ donor. The irony of the myth is that in order for brain death to be declared, all the possible measures to keep a person alive must have been taken. According to the Uniform Determination of Death Act, brain death is defined as the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem. A brain-dead person is dead, although their cardiopulmonary functioning may be artificially maintained for some time. Because of the neurological nature of brain death, a controlled and extensive clinical exam occurs to make that final declaration. Brain death is final and finite; it is not in the same thing as a coma or persistent vegetative state.
Brain death determination is rare and occurs only in about 1 out of every 100 hospital deaths.
Doctors wouldn’t know a person is in this state until after tending to their other injuries. If EMTs, firefighters and ER doctors were to let patients’ die before artificially maintaining cardiopulmonary function and tending to other injuries, they wouldn’t even be under the right circumstances to donate anyways, making this myth absolutely implausible.
If you’ve ever wondered, “will doctors still save my life if I’m an organ donor”, now you know the facts about donation and understand that medical professionals will do ABOSULETLY EVERYTHING in their power to save your life, no matter what.
You can register your decision online today!