For the last eleven years I have worked in Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation in the UK.  My experience has taken me from being a Specialist Nurse in Organ Donation (SNOD), to being the Operational leader when Deemed Consent was introduced in 2015.  The latter required me to oversee the strategy, implementation and delivery of the new law in Wales while supporting effective research and evaluation processes to monitor progress.  As the first country in the UK to deliver upon deemed consent, much has been learnt and shared from this experience.

Over the last two years, I have been the Project Lead: Deemed Consent Legislation in England (also including Jersey (July 2019), Guernsey (expected 2021), Ilse of Man (expected 2021) and now Northern Ireland (unclear timescale)).  Taking the experience from Wales we were able to build a robust delivery programme to support SNOD education, a public awareness campaign, operational readiness and supporting hospitals to deliver this change.  The law change in England came into effect during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (20th May 2020) but despite this we are already seeing very promising results from the implementation.