Medical Staff Recognition January 2023

Anna Condella, MD, Pulmonary Medicine and Intensivist
LifeCenter LifeSaver Award Winner – December 2022

Each month, LifeCenter Northwest selects a LifeSaver Award winner. This award honors and recognizes those who go above and beyond to save lives—honoring our shared values to improve donation culture and outcomes.

Anna Condella, MD, received the LifeSaver Award in December from LifeCenter Northwest for her above and beyond assistance in Valley's Critical Care Unit.

Recently, Dr. Condella was involved in a Donation After Circulatory Death (DCD) case. DCD cases involve a patient who has suffered devastating and irreversible injury but who does not meet formal brain death criteria. However, if the patient's heart stops beating within a certain timeframe after withdrawal of life support, their organs can be recovered. Crucially, the surgeons involved in potential recovery process cannot be part of the end-of-life care or in the declaration of circulatory death.

In this particular DCD case, the patient was a registered donor and both the family and the hospital staff were committed to honoring their donation decision. At the same time, the family was ready to have the donation case completed as soon as possible, so they could say goodbye to their loved one.

While LifeCenter Northwest was able to secure an OR time for organ recovery at Valley, the physician on-call informed our team that they were unlikely to have a provider available to declare death. Valley was short-staffed at this time and the night-shift intensivist in charge of declaring death had to step away to tend to another patient.

Even though Dr. Condella was the day-shift intensivist, she volunteered to stay for several hours after the end of her long shift in order to assist LifeCenter with this case, staying on to be the declaring provider. Ultimately, Dr. Condella was able to declare death, allow LifeCenter to move forward with this DCD case and give the patient's family much-needed closure.

LifeCenter Northwest says, "We are proud to honor Dr. Condella with the LifeSaver Award for going above and beyond her duty, honoring donor decisions and making the gift of life possible."