Providence Health Care’s nurses, doctors, allied staff and more are featured in Transplant Stories, a new four-episode TV series that follows the personal life-and-death drama behind the many organ transplants performed each year in Canada and British Columbia.
The series, made in partnership with Providence as well as Vancouver Coastal Health, BC Transplant and others, will be broadcast starting November 19 on the Knowledge Network (BC only) for four consecutive Tuesdays at 9 pm PT.
It streams for free at www.knowledge.ca/transplant-stories across Canada, also as of November 19.
Throughout the series, transplant patients and their families and friends share their personal highs and lows of the experience.
Unsentimental stories tell the realities of transplant
Each episode profiles several people desperate for the call that could save their lives. These are gritty, unsentimental stories that depict the joy of receiving a life-saving organ and the crushing disappointment of missing out.
You’ll see St. Paul’s Hospital’s transplant doctors including Dr. Anson Cheung and Dr. Mustafa Toma along with cardiac transplant nurses like Wynne Chiu as they support Angela, a patient with a condition that hardens her heart muscles and urgently needs a new heart.
The renal team, including Dr. Jag Gill, Dr. John Gill and Dr. Brian Mayson, is also featured as they care for patients in desperate need of a kidney.
Series has potential to normalize organ donation and transplant
For Dr. Mayson, a renal transplant surgeon at St. Paul’s Hospital, the value of the series is its potential to normalize discussions around organ donation and transplantation.
“Death and dying are difficult topics for everyone, and the uncertainty about what happens after we pass away adds to this discomfort,” he says. “Hopefully, people will see that if we choose to donate our organs, what is certain after we die is the lasting impact we make by improving or prolonging other people’s lives.”
Currently, there are more than 600 British Columbians waiting for an organ transplant – and potentially survival.
For Wynne Chiu, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Heart Failure and Transplantation, “It was an absolute honour to participate. We take for granted that transplants are done now in modern medicine. But the miracle that it exists never ceases to amaze me. This series really highlights that.”
The series is emotional and revealing thanks to unprecedented access the filmmakers were given to Providence and VCH operating rooms, medical teams, patients and their families, to give viewers the full picture of what is involved in organ transplant.
The series is directed by local filmmaker Sheona McDonald, for Vancouver producer Omnifilm Entertainment, in association with Knowledge Network.
To register as an organ donor: https://register.transplant.bc.ca/ Make sure to have your Personal Health Number with you.
If you think you’ve registered, but want to make sure, visit: https://register.transplant.bc.ca/verification
View the trailer for the powerful series.
Story by Ann Gibbon, Providence Health Care
