Passionate and caring, Chad Abbott is University of Michigan Hospital Transplant Center's employee of the year
At the University of Michigan Hospital's Transplant Center, Chad Abbott is known as a go-to guy.
"Chad is very passionate about taking care of patients," said Dianne Sodt-Davitt, operations manager at the Transplant Center. And Abbott, a registered nurse and transplant coordinator, is the first person to step up and help a colleague. "If somebody gets sick and can't take their on-call that night, Chad often steps up to do it. He is very much seen as a team member."
Abbott was recently named the transplant center's employee of the year. The annual award was started about five years ago as a way to recognize employees who go the extra mile. It is driven by employee nominations.

Chad Abbott
Abbott works with the team that runs the Paired Kidney Donation Program at the University of Michigan Transplant Center. He helped get the program started about 18 months ago, and to date it has successfully done 16 transplants.
A computer shuffles names in the program around until it finds pairs. This allows for more matches. For example, if there's a person who wants to donate a kidney to her sister but is not a match, she may be matched up with someone who has a willing live donor who is also not a match. And the computer also finds a donor who is a match for her sister. The two live donors were going to donate anyway, so they just give up their kidneys to different people. This paired switch enables the two recipients to receive kidneys.
"It's very beneficial," said Sodt-Davitt. "I give my kidney to that stranger who I may never meet. So my sister gets a kidney and I give a kidney. I was going to give a kidney anyway."
The team is in the process of scheduling three more people for transplants. Three pairs of donors/recipients have been shuffled and matched.
"Probably one of the biggest joys of my job is when you see a living donor come forward and actually proceed to donation," Abbot said.
Sometimes, an altruistic donor will call the program and say he or she is willing to donate a kidney to anyone who needs it. Such altruism is very welcome.
"There are more than 80,000 people in our nation waiting for a kidney transplant," Abbott said. "In Michigan, as of April 1, there are more than 2,380 people waiting. About 1,200 of those are on U of M's list."
People donate for various reasons, he said. A lot of times they've had a family member or friend who has received a donation.
Each potential donor must be carefully assessed, and unfortunately, it doesn't always work out.
"One of the biggest challenges of my job is when we evaluate a donor and end up telling them we don't think they are appropriate do donate," Abbott said. "... It's still a big surgery, and we look at everybody very closely. It's hard to tell somebody who wants to donate that they can't."
Donations have been down the past few years. Abbott guesses it might be due to the economy, and people's overall general health.
Various factors spark an increase in donations.
"The TV show 'Grey's Anatomy' had a program on donation and we generated a fair number of donations from it," Abbott said.
Chad is a father of two and loves coaching his children's sports teams. As for his employee of the year title, he's modest about that.
"I just got lucky," he says.
Pamela Gossiaux is a freelance writer for AnnArbor.com. Reach the news desk at news@annarbor.com or 734-623-2530.
Comments
Matt Cooper1
Sun, Jul 11, 2010 : 10:58 p.m.
I know Chad and worked with him a few years ago. He is an outstanding person as well as an outstanding nurse! Way to go, Chad!!