Family Readiness Assessment Tool (FRAT)

Midwest Transplant Network (MTN) recognizes the challenges hospital staff members face when a family adamantly requests immediate extubation and a donation conversation needs to be facilitated.

MTN wants to proactively support hospital staff members by providing more timely donation conversations with families. Our goal is to jointly assess family readiness for donation conversations with families while:

• Providing on-time donation information and support for family decision making,

• Upholding First Person Authorization and

• Matching families’ timeframes for palliative extubation.

To jointly assess family readiness, MTN may ask additional questions during conversations regarding open referrals.

1. Is the family showing signs that they may accept that this is a nonsurvivable injury?

2. Has the family made comments that would lead you to think they may elect to move to comfort care in the next day or two?

This information can help determine the timing of MTN interaction with the family and what type of interaction is appropriate.

Our goal is to work together to match the donation discussion to the family’s timeline for end-of-life decisions/palliative extubation.