Guest Speaker for May 2012 Heidi Flanagan RN

Transplant nurse coordinator

Heidi Flanagan is currently the transplant nurse coordinator for all patients who have been referred for a lung transplant evaluation at the University of Virginia. Her current role includes intake, education, and coordination of the extensive evaluation for each patient who is a potential lung transplant candidate. After the transplant evaluation is completed, Heidi assists with patient case presentations to the lung transplant selection committee. For those patients who are approved and listed for lung transplantation at UVA, Heidi follows and coordinates waitlist management with the rest of her team while those patients wait for suitable organ donors.

Heidi has been employed by the UVA Health System for nearly 24 years. In the 80’s Heidi worked as a Respiratory Therapist and an Echocardiographer in Tidewater Virginia and later at UVA after she moved to the Charlottesville area. In the early 90’s, Heidi took a leave of absence to work in France as a technical trainer and to introduce one of the first color and digital medical diagnostic ultrasound instrumentations in that country. When she returned to the states Heidi went back to school and earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at UVA. Heidi’s nursing experience at UVA includes critical care nursing in the thoracic and cardiovascular critical care units, clinical research nursing for the development of surgical devices and clinical laboratory instrumentation and assays, hospital nurse epidemiology coordinator for blood borne pathogens, and, since 2008, in her current position as a RN Coordinator with the UVA Lung Transplant office. Heidi lives with her three teen daughters outside of Charlottesville, loves to ski, play soccer and is active in her community, church and with Special Olympics.

---