Thank you, Leanne, and to the committee for this opportunity.
I'll touch on five comments.
First, we've developed strong partnerships with the in-hospital critical care community's support health care professionals in offering the option of organ donation as a part of quality end-of-life care. In B.C. we have donation committees at the provincial health authority and hospital levels to review compliance to regulations that identify opportunities for quality improvements. A vital element of this is a robust education strategy for staff in emergency rooms, critical care units, and operating rooms. We provide education, tools, and support to hospitals with the goal of ensuring that all families faced with a tragedy have the opportunity to consider organ donation.
Second, we now have a network of system-wide donation specialists and in-hospital donation coordinators, who work collaboratively with critical care donation physicians and regional hospital-based critical care teams to support organ donation at the hospital level. Our 24-7 team of organ donation coordinators receive referrals from across B.C. and provide expertise in supporting families, the consent process, and donor management. Our organ recovery team travels to hospitals throughout the province to recover organs. This is a patient and family-centred model that allows organ recovery to occur at the hospital where the donor is located and allows families of donors to be with their loved ones for as long as possible.
Third, we are also working with hospitals across the province to expand organ donation opportunities by offering donation after cardiocirculatory death in a steadily increasing number of hospitals, including small hospitals outside of B.C.'s major urban centres. This offers another end-of-life option for families facing the sudden death of a loved one in hospital, and it also expands the number of potential organ donors.
A fourth fundamental infrastructure component for high-donation performance is the implementation of national leading practice recommendations led through the Canadian Council for Donation and Transplantation and Canadian Blood Services. These include standardizing guidelines for neurological determination of death, standardized guidelines for donation after cardiocirculatory death, donor management guidelines, donor family support and effective requesting as part of quality end-of-life care, and donation after medical assistance in dying.
The fifth and final component is public awareness, understanding, and support for organ donation, which are all critical to the success of an organ donation system. To that end, we have a strong public awareness, education, and community relations program. Underpinning this program is the provincial organ donor registry. While it serves a clear purpose for our organ donation team working with families' potential donors, the registry serves an additional public engagement purpose as a tool to enable public conversations about organ donation. Registering a decision is the key call to action at the heart of most public awareness campaigns on organ donation in B.C. and across Canada.
Where we've had additional success is through partnerships with the organizations that serve as touchpoints for the citizens of British Columbia. The first is with Service B.C., which has 62 locations across the province where people can access support for programs and services offered by the provincial government. The second is with the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia in their driver licensing offices, where people obtain or renew their driver's licences and service cards. When people visit these offices, they are asked about organ donation, and then they may have a conversation about the subject and register their decision. The majority of registrants in the organ donor registry now come through these two partnerships. In the year of the full ICBC partnership, decisions registered in the registry increased by 15%. More than 1.2 million British Columbians have registered their decision since the registry was established.
We also maintain a robust program of public education and outreach, which involves advertising, media relations, and social media engagement aligned with national initiatives such as National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week, at the end of April. We have a robust network of volunteers, which includes organ donor families, living organ donors, and transplant recipients, whose stories drive awareness and support for organ donation. These volunteers are highly engaged in our community and workplace events and campaigns.
The work around public engagement and awareness helps to normalize conversations about organ donation and transplant in our communities and within families, so it can be seen as an acceptable and normal end-of-life option.