Best Practices for Intensivists Planning and Opening Hospital-Based Deceased Organ Donor Care Units: Part 1

Over the past 2 decades, clinical management and recovery of organs from deceased donors in the United States increasingly have been centralized into specialty donor care units. Intensivists who lead or practice in donor care units colocated with hospitals (or hospital-based donor care units) are well positioned to offer operational experience, to deliver evidence-based clinical donor management, and to leverage hospital resources to facilitate research and education efforts to improve access to transplantable organs. In this How I Do It article, intensivist leaders of 11 US donor care units collaborating in the Donor Care Unit Network for Optimizing Recovery group describe the benefits and limitations of hospital-based donor care units and collate resources and shared experiences to inform planning and opening of other hospital-based donor care units.