At the Heart of the Matter: Transforming Gratitude into Giving

When you’re a heart transplant cardiolo-gist, there’s a special kind of symmetry that happens with your patients. They come to you for a new heart, and you end up giving them a piece of yours.

I love my job. I am the DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Chair in Heart Transplant Medicine, associate director of Clinical Affairs at the Smidt Heart Institute, director of Advanced Heart Disease, and director of the Heart Transplant Program at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. I take care of patients who are on the verge of death. With a successful transplant, they can walk out the front door appreciating everything around them anew. Seeing that transformation never gets old—it’s a miracle every time.

In transplantation, a patient’s journey starts with a gift—with the selfless decision made by families during a time of profound grief to donate the organs of their loved ones. Patients know this. It is difficult to articulate their sense of gratitude, but it is profound. This gratitude often translates into a desire to give back somehow and opens the door to philanthropy.

Approximately 74% of Cedars-Sinai donors are grateful patients—that says something about how our patients value the work that we do across the Cedars-Sinai health system. My program performs more adult heart transplants than any other program in the country (according to the United Network for Organ Sharing). Meanwhile, my institution, the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, ranks number one in L.A., number 1 in California, and number 3 in the nation for cardiology and heart surgery, according to U.S. News & World Report. That success represents both the investment of time and energy by our expert faculty and highly experienced staff and the investment our patients have made over the years to support our research and educational outreach efforts.

Grateful patient philanthropy allows me to advance research by pursuing the most ground-breaking science, clinical trials, and emerging treatments that can be translated from the bench to the bedside. It allows me to educate and train the next generation of scientific and medical leaders by supporting highly competitive fellowships, residency, and training programs. It also allows us to build and expand facilities that better serve our patients and enhance their experience—and support important community programs that help underserved populations.

Asking patients directly for a gift can be delicate, but I know how much their generosity accomplishes. Ensuring that these initiatives are supported is an important part of the work because this is what allows us to deliver the best patient care and best patient experience possible.

To me, the key to grateful patient philanthropy is building a rapport with patients as people—especially by listening. I’m in a busy field; time isn’t always a luxury. Giving attention to the “personal” and not just engaging around medical discussions is what creates connection and ultimately deepens trust. Often, patients will tell you exactly what they need from you, and it’s not always medical expertise they are seeking. Staying attuned and responsive to them, to their needs as people, goes a long way. By strengthening your relationship with the patient, you can inspire them to better comply with medication regimens and follow-up visits. It also creates space for mutual exchanges, with patients becoming comfortable asking about my interests and hobbies.

This relationship allows me to talk about my research and provides a natural way to introduce the need for financial support. I am genuinely excited about the research we are pursuing, and I think my passion comes through when talking with patients. In my experience, patients like to hear about how research can help future generations and other people like them.

I generally don’t do a hard ask, but rather I try to paint a picture of what’s possible with continued support. If a patient expresses an interest, I will suggest connecting them with our Development team, who are there to work with the patient to find the most meaningful opportunity for them to give back.

I recall a case of a young woman who had a lot of antibodies (small molecules that attack a donor heart). This meant having to find a donor that the antibodies wouldn’t reject. The patient initially went to her local hospital, and they told her it would be nearly impossible to find a match and she should prepare for the worst.

Because of research we’ve done at Cedars-Sinai in antibody-mediated rejection, we took on her case. We performed a transplant, and she did have some rejection, but we were able to mitigate it. Now she’s three years post-transplant and doing well. Her father understood that our success was due to advances in research and that research came with a cost. The family donated to further our pursuit of tolerance, the holy grail of transplantation, where the body doesn’t need any anti-rejection medication. For this patient and her family, it was a very meaningful way to give back. It’s a great example of how personal experience, gratitude, and philanthropy can align for the benefit of all.

Patients who give really care about science and supporting me and my team’s endeavors at the Smidt Heart Institute. Grateful patient philanthropy at its core is about helping others help themselves. We need these programs to continue building a culture of philanthropy. They educate our staff on how to engage with grateful patients to support our philanthropic efforts and move the needle on groundbreaking research and patient care.

Equally important, grateful patient philanthropy requires you to be a good steward of the gift, making use of the money to its fullest, as well as maintaining a relationship with the donor. For instance, I hold an endowed chair in heart transplant medicine, which is an incredible honor. These funds have been a tremendous resource, supporting many initiatives, including multiple expert consensus conferences to help answer clinically relevant questions in the transplant field, resulting in the development or refinement of national guidelines. We provide a detailed report of these activities to the donor annually, keeping them informed and involved. In addition, we started a tradition of giving the donor a small silver heart decal for every patient transplanted that year—a visual reminder of all the very real people their gift has helped. While the donor is glad to hear that their gift is pushing the science forward, it’s the more than 1,000 silver hearts in their collection that resonates most.

I don’t consider myself a fundraiser, but these interactions are an important part of the work. Generosity from grateful patients helps push the boundaries of medicine and deepens my sense of professional responsibility. My commitment to research is my commitment to patients—those who walk out the front door today, and those who appear on our doorstep tomorrow in need of our help. The care they need and deserve depends on our ability to improve our understanding of disease processes, explore emerging therapies and hand the next generation of practitioners a strong foundation of knowledge to continue this important work.

At the end of the day, expressing gratitude through giving is a part of a patient’s journey too—a journey I am grateful to take with them.