This nurse in Pitié-Salpêtrière, also a researcher in ethics, reveals his profession on the occasion of the national day of reflection on organ donation and the transplant.
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This spring morning, a mother and daughter in his twenties are received in the polytrauma service at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. The day before, at 10:30 p.m., their daughter and sister, Marguerite Delage, aged 16, was overthrown by a truck by going to the cinema with her friends. She was transferred to the emergency room of the Parisian hospital. The scanner reveals serious cerebral attacks. “Very in-depth examinations were done last night, the bleeding is so serious that Marguerite’s brain has been damaged,” announces Frank Ferrari, nurse coordinator of organ and tissue samples at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital ( AP-HP). The two women are collapsed.
“There are two ways to die, either the heart stops, or it is the brain, which is the case of Marguerite. It is in a state of clinical and brain death”, adds Thomas, internal in medicine. Faced with the emergence of this violent death, Frank Ferrari explains, speaks calmly: “These are very difficult moments, what happens is very very serious, it is irreversible.” Time seems suspended.
What is played out during this forty-five minute interview is a more real than life simulation. “Do you know if your daughter, your sister, had opposed during her lifetime to the gift of her organs and her fabrics?” Asked Frank Ferrari, who plays his own role. The mother and sister are played by a nurse and a nursing assistant respectively. These sessions, about two per month, are useful for the team, and for resuscitators.
“The temporality in the question of organ donation is essential, the announcement of the death should not be back. We must have time to take the time, despite the tragic circumstances, the emergency context”, insists Frank Ferrari. Faced with the unthinkable, some families do not hear, can be in denial, even refusal or aggressiveness.
The goal is to seek a possible opposition to the donation. “We must anchor the idea of civicism in health and encourage everyone to talk about it,” insists Emmanuelle Cortot-Boucher, director general of the Biomedicine Agency (ABM) upstream of the national day of reflection on the donation of organs and transplants, and recognition to donors, scheduled for Wednesday June 22.
The law stipulates that we are all alleged donors of organs and tissues (cornea, vessels, epidermis, valves, tendons …), unless we expressed our refusal in our lifetime, being inscribed in the national register of refusal or by having informed our loved ones. In fact, “the request is always made to the family or relatives to testify to the wishes of the deceased”, explains Frank Ferrari.
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